CUCUMBER
Traditional salad vegetable which can be produced either in a glasshouse or outdoors. The long green types found in shops can only be grown with the aid of a heated glasshouse but the other forms are quite at home in the vegetable plot or produced earlier using cloches, cold frames or polytunnels.
The courgette is a variety of cucurtbit, which means it's from the same family as cucumber, squash and melon. It is the most popular vegetable of the squash family, being extremely versatile, tender and easy to cook. Just don't boil them! They have a deep green skin with firm pale flesh and are also known as zucchini.