Little Squashes

Darla the Kitty Princess checks out a platter of summer squash in her flower border. Some of the ones she's looking over would qualify as "baby squash" - the kind I could never afford when I lived in Southern California and occasionally visited the upscale Irvine Ranch market.

I think the very cutest baby squashes are the scallop types (in white, all shades of green, pale yellow, deep yellow, rings,  stripes, and combinations) and the crooknecks. And "round zucchinis" have gone beyond the old European heirlooms and their progeny to standardized hybrids. They make for a fun picture arranged like billiard balls. But I'm not growing any of those this year.

Even though I've simplified our squash list, we've still got 8 plants of summer squash this year - way too many for one family, unless you plan on giving some away. Even if you give lots of squash away, you can be overwhelmed if you don't pick them young. The ones on the platter are:

Magda:   A pale green, fat Lebanese (Cousa) type bred in France. My favorite zucchini. First to produce this year, as usual.
Sweet Zuke:   Medium green with faint stripes, shaped something like the Cousa types when it gets bigger. I bought seeds for this variety as a darker companion to Magda. Tends to break at the neck when picked.
Spineless Beauty:   Zucchinis on a less-prickly, less-hairy plant. They're the ones in the photo with the blossoms still attached. How high-end is THAT? My favorite variety name for a "hairless" zucchini was "Kojac". This type really is more pleasant to pick than regular zucchini.
Meteor:   A deep yellow zucchini, very slim when young.  Apparently being dropped from production. Yellow zucchinis taste a lot more like green zucchini than like the yellow crooknecks and straightnecks. They probably have a different profile of phytonutrients than the green ones, so if you're a zucchini fan, growing both could be good for you.
Precious II:   A hybrid straightneck yellow squash which resists greening from a common squash virus.  They're the ones that look sort of like pale yellow bowling pins in the photo.
Zephyr:   The one in the photo that's yellow on top and pale green on the bottom. A unique squash bred by Johnny's Selected Seeds. Has a winter squash in its parentage, and is rather firm.  Nice flavor.  Reported to keep better in the fridge than most varieties.

I planted two plants each of Magda and Zephyr. Thought I had 9 plants in all, but the Butterstick I thought I planted turned out to be a melon. Maybe I'm a little crazy for planting so many. But the bounty doesn't last forever. Summer squashes tend to produce so much fruit that they seem to wear themselves out after a while.

In our yard, the yummy yellow squashes, both crookneck and straightneck, tend to succumb to disease and/or insects faster than the zucchini types. Here, it's possible to put in a fall crop of summer squash if the white flies and squash bugs aren't too bad and soil diseases don't get to the plants.

Recipes: Okie Squash and Tomatoes is a good recipe for people who are not wild about zucchini by itself. Skillet Lasagna with Shredded Zucchini works even for most people who don't like zucchini because of its texture.