At this point, in this area, I have given up on standard zucchini. No matter how disease-resistant the variety is touted as being, it succumbs to icky yellow wilts. This summer I tried three vining types which proved totally resistant to bugs and wilts and were alarmingly healthy. The three were trombocino, Thai bottle, and serpiente. My hands-down favorite was the serpiente, which is shown above. It produced three-foot-long “zucchini” all summer until killed by hard frost, with nary a bug or yellowed leaf in sight. I should note, though, that two plants covered an area about 20’x20’ so thickly that nothing else would grow. Next year I will limit myself to one plant and prune it a bit to control its ambitions.
The trombocino squash had healthy vines but seemed to have some pollination problems, and many of the young squash withered and dropped off unpollinated. There were plenty of pollinating insects, so I don’t know what the problem was but I don’t think that I will grow it again.
The Thai bottle squash was a very prolific producer but I did not find this out until the end of the season. Throughout the season I thought that it was not producing more than a few squash, but when the first hard frost killed the leaves back, I found 24 fully mature squash that had been invisible under the thick leaf cover. Since they are only edible when rather small, I would not grow this one again unless I had a very large trellis or some other arrangement where I could reliably see the small squash. But if you do have a large trellis and want one plant to cover it in a short period of time, this is your candidate. But do note that it has to be a big, really strong trellis. This squash is probably capable of covering the side of a building, given a very large trellis and half a chance.
I should note that if you love squash blossoms, as I do, the serpent and bottle squashes have small fragile white flowers, not the great golden trumpets that gladden our hearts. I might put in one hill of pumpkins just for the gorgeous and delicious blossoms.
When it comes to flavor, all three were the equal of any zucchini I’ve ever eaten. Personally I think that too much is made of flavor nuances in zucchini, and they all taste much alike to me. Same with these vining squashes, all of which have a mild flavor when young and a texture just slightly firmer that zucchini. Get them young, when a thumbnail goes right through the skin with no particular effort. I think that all summer squash are best when cut in pieces of the size you want for the dish you’re making, salted generously, and left for an hour. Excess liquid can then be squeezed away with a dish towel. I just don’t think there’s any substitute for this step, although I do skip it if my decision to cook squash for dinner was impulsive.
The mature fruits that you inevitably find when frost kills the leaves are not usable as squash, but when cut in half with a pruning saw, the chickens relish the insides.
My urban homestead 