Plant · P-206

Summer Squash

Cucurbita pepo

Summer squash - zucchini, crookneck, pattypan - is a fast-fruiting plant, ready in 50 to 60 days, but the squash vine borer is close to inevitable wherever it grows, so cultivar choice decides the outcome more than anything else. Tatume, a landrace grown as calabacita in Mexico, resists the borer far better than a standard zucchini and is worth planting as the default rather than the experiment. An early spring crop that blooms before the borer moth lays its eggs gets harvested before the larvae destroy the vine, making this a short, early-season crop rather than a season-long one. Beyond the fruit, the leaves are an unusually strong animal feed, shown to replace up to three-quarters of the soybean meal in a rabbit diet with no drop in reproduction.