My favorite is the sweet meat. Not because it is my personal favorite, so much as it is the only one I can get my family to eat without complaining. It is dry, sweet, and doesn't have the stringy texture that my family gags on. I love the delicata, sweet dumpling, butternut, and did you know that a scallopini which is allowed to get big makes a pretty good winter squash...completely different flavor, but still quite tasty.

I love the spaghetti squash--seems to keep fairly well for me, and the Hokkaido--those small cheese-wheel shaped green ones with the dry flesh. But I'll steal a neighbor's uncarved pumpkin after Halloween and eat that too (they were just going to throw out a perfectly sound vegetable!).
By the way--when I lived in Mission a farmer told me you couldn't grow peppers in that area--why do you think he would say that? What's your soil like, stuck?
(p.s.--I am back living in Vermillion now--[u][/u]Clay County[u][/u]

Well, our soil here is a very clay/alkaline based soil. I've grown peppers here, but a trick that I use is to plant a matchbook with each pepper seedling planted. The peppers need the sulfur to put on fruit. I'm sure that if you were to add alot of organic compost to the mix it would probably help too, but this trick has worked for me and until I get the compost pile producing well, I'll stick with the matchbooks that I pick up at the nearby gas station. Other people have told me that their peppers never seem to produce much here, but I've has good luck so far. Jane

My favorite types are two oriental squash - Thai small pumpkin, and black futsu. Both are of the butternut species, making it resistant to the squash vine borer, which is a major pest here. They also have great flavors, run between 3 and 8 lbs., and are very productive, growing well on a fence, which I grow beans, peas, cukes, and tomatoes on, as well.

Yes, I've done the scallopini (pattypan) as a winter squash too--after having to leave my garden in the middle of August. I came back for a visit in September or October (I'd moved) and there were some foot-diameter flying saucers out there that had cured on the vine. They get nice and hard-shelled. The flavor is pretty bland, in my opinion.