Feeding & Nutrition

The courgette plant was meant to feed us, not the dog. I'd put two in the raised bed on a whim, the way you do, certain they'd produce a modest handful and we'd feel smug about it. By August the bed was a jungle and the things were coming faster than we could eat them, and I was sliding armsful into neighbours' hands and still finding three more fat ones hiding under the leaves every morning like the plant was mocking my appetite.

The dog, a lazy old lab called Dennis, watched the whole operation with interest but no urgency, the way he watches most food events that don't involve him. Then one hot day I steamed a couple of courgettes for myself, left the colander on the floor while I fetched butter, and came back to find Dennis had taken one entire cooled slice off the top and was chewing it with the focus of a dog who'd discovered a secret. He didn't gulp it. He chewed, which for Dennis is practically a ceremony.

I looked it up before I made it a habit, because a garden glut is not a reason to poison your dog. Courgette, plain, cooked or raw, with no oil, no salt, no garlic, no onion, is on the safe list. Good even. Low calorie, water-heavy, a bit of fibre, the kind of filler that lets a hungry lab feel full without the hips widening. Dennis is the width of a small sofa and the last thing he needed was more calories, so the vegetable that grew free in the bed was suddenly the most useful thing in his diet.

So I started slicing the glut into rounds, steaming a batch while I made my own dinner, and folding a handful into his food. He got the kibble, a spoon of his usual topper, and a pile of pale green rings that he treated as the prize. A lab will tell you, with his whole body, which part of the bowl is the best part, and Dennis left the kibble and ate the courgette first, every time, as if the vegetable were the meat and the meat were the afterthought.

The neighbours stopped taking them. You can only offload so many courgettes before people lock their doors, and the plant kept going, indifferent to social collapse, so the dog ate what the village wouldn't. I worked out I was saving maybe a tenner a month on his treats, which isn't the point anyone mentions when they tell you to grow your own, but it's a real number and Dennis is an expensive animal to feed well.

One thing I learned the hard way. Raw courgette, the big ones, can be a bit much, stringy and hard to chew for an old mouth, and Dennis coughed once on a chunk and I stopped giving them raw. Steamed, cooled, sliced thin, they go down soft and safe and he barely has to work. The skin stays on, the nutrients are mostly there, and the dog gets a vegetable he thinks he stole from the garden, which he sort of did.

By September the plant finally slowed, the way they do when the light goes, and I missed it more than I expected. The dog's bowl got a bit barer, the treats came back out of a bag, and Dennis went back to being a lab who eats what he's given. But that summer taught me something I'd say to anyone with a patch of soil and a hungry dog. Grow the boring stuff. The free, safe, watery veg is the best filler you'll ever have, and the dog won't know it cost you nothing but a seed and a watering can.

I've put four in the bed this year. Dennis inspected the seedlings and approved, in his way, which is to say he lay next to them and went to sleep. The glut is coming. The bowl is ready.

I've since given a few slices to a neighbour's dog, a fat old beagle who pants at the sight of any green thing because his owner swears he hates vegetables, and the beagle ate them without a pause and looked up for more. Dogs don't hate vegetables. They hate being offered a bare carrot when they wanted the roast, and the courgette, slipped into a bowl they already liked, never read as punishment. The beagle's owner now grows her own, two plants, copying my glut, and we compare widths at the gate like the boring people we've become.

There's a lesson in the bed that has nothing to do with dogs. The things that grow easily, the free things, the ones you didn't scheme over, are often the ones worth the most, and we spend our money on the bagged and the branded while the good stuff sits in the soil for the price of a seed. Dennis got his fill of summer from a plant I almost didn't plant, and the bowl was better for it. Next year I'll put four in, and the lab will inspect them, and the glut will come, and none of us will mind a bit.