You can stuff them, though it is easier to cook the stuffing minus the usually tough-skinned zucchini. We leave ours out on the grass above the house, so the lyrebirds can play rolling games with them, which amuses them and us. You can even call them marrows and cut them in chunks and boil till squidgy then serve with a truly old-fashioned gluey cheese sauce, which is a waste of cheese.

The one thing you cannot do is pretend they will not happen. If you grow zucchini there will be one – or a dozen – lurking under the leaves that grows to a leviathan. Or you will go on holidays, innocently returning to find your vegetable garden taken over by beasts the porn industry would reject.

Though there may be gardeners out there who can claim, with absolute truth in their eyes, that they have never had a feral zucchini. They probably also have every branch of their tomatoes staked; picked off the slugs and grasshoppers at 6 am when the first are frisky and the latter dozy and both are vulnerable; and eat every lettuce before it goes to seed. Luckily I have never met one. I have a feeling we wouldn't get on.

The conventional wisdom, which I have spouted too, is that you should restrict your zucchini plants to three. And this is wise if your space is limited. But zucchinis are slow to flower and fruit in our climate. Three may give you a glut by March but there will only be a poor crop at Christmas. Put in at least six, for a family of two. Or more. And make them fun.

The classic zucchini is Black Jack, though I'm not sure why, unless it's because of the connotations of being a winner. It's dark green, prolific, boring and probably won't get downy mildew till autumn. If you plant fresh zucchini plants in January they'll be more vigorous and keep fruiting right up to the first frost of the season and even longer, given luck and a warm spot.

Black Jack don't taste of much, which doesn't matter if your summer is also rich in tomatoes, garlic, onion, olive oil and basil, which all go beautifully with zucchini that have a lovely texture and are refreshingly low in calories, even when eaten with the above, as long as the olive oil is used with restraint.

Nitro F1 is another modern hybrid, almost identical to Black Jack except even more prolific and downy mildew resistant. You may even get away with only the spring planting if summer is kind and we don't have the hot and dry then hot and wet kind of weather that downy mildew loves.

A better zucchini for gourmets is the paler Lebanese zucchini, which also comes in a range of hybrids. It crops earlier than the dark one, especially in cooler climates or the long cool springs we have when we are not having an early smoke-filled summer. They do get tougher than the dark greens as they get bigger, so make sure you pick them small, no bigger than your little finger, if possible, still with their flower unfaded and attached. There are markets in the world where no decent cook would ever buy a zucchini without its flower still attached. How else do you know that it is fresh, picked so recently that there has been no time for the bloom to wilt?

And gourmet wise, zucchini Bush Baby is perhaps the best of all – bred to be picked while still tiny, rather than as baby monsters who just haven't yet achieved their gross potential. Bush Baby is striped, too, dark and pale green, and they keep their stripes as long as you don't overcook them. They are so tiny they can be cooked whole, baked, stir-fried, steamed, even boiled, as long as you don't chop off the ends, which allows them to turn watery fast.

Zucchini Safari F1 (the F1 means it is a hybrid, not a contender in a car race) is also striped, but does tend to bolt to whale size if you blink three times at the height of summer. But it too is gloriously prolific and, like Bush Baby and Lebanese, has its own flavour. You can puree them with potatoes to make soup and still taste the zucchini, rather than just lightening the carbs and adding a faint green colour.

Then there are the patty-shaped zucchinis, which can grow large and tough enough to use as lethal frisbees or possibly flying saucers capable of surviving re-entry into our atmosphere, but lovely eaten whole and tiny. They are nowhere near as prolific as the long ones, and come in either pale green to cream to yellow.

My favourites though are still Ronde de Nice, or any of the other round varieties. Again, not prolific at all, nor fast to bolt. But their flavour is delicate and delightful. Their texture is firm, almost impossible to overcook. Even fussy kids will eat them plainly boiled. Somehow those tiny balls look too inviting to ignore. Cooked whole in a rich tomato and basil sauce, with perhaps a black olive or ten or even a few anchovies, or made sweet and sour with a dash of brown sugar and balsamic vinegar, and they are irresistible.

This is the time to plant zucchini seed of the best varieties you can find, not the greenhouse seedlings in the nursery. Both will crop at the same time but the harvest from your gourmet seedlings will be far superior in both taste and quantity.

I plant ours in shallow, soil-filled trays up on the barbecue but the classic spot is a sunny kitchen windowsill, which we don't have. They germinate in a week or so, and sit there happily till I either feel the frost danger is over or I can't resist getting them in the garden and plant them out, ignoring the chances of them withering in the cold. Come to think of it, they haven't withered in a frost yet after many decades of zucchini planting, so either I instinctively know when to plant them or, more likely, zucchini are tougher than I have given them credit for.

Anyway, plant them. Carrots may need gardening craft; lettuce may need dedication, but anyone with a punnet of seedlings and a handful of slow release fertiliser can grow zucchini. They'll survive drought or week-long neglect as long as you pay them some attention at weekends. And you will get lots.

"Lots" is what it's all about with vegies. Lots and lots of lovely lots.

This week I'm:

* talking, not gardening;

* dreaming of planting beds of tomatoes, picking buckets of beans, boxes of apples;

* googling fruit trees we don't have time, space or water to plant;

* and rose bushes I would love to have the space to plant;

* and remembering that my Bloomfield Abundance rose died last year after I left the hose on and undermined its roots, so I have an excuse to plant a replacement, at least

* and maybe we could have just one more hanging basket filled with a shade-tolerant, dwarf, patio rose.