I'm including three pictures of my tatume zucchini plants. They were all from the same seed stock, but are at different stages of growth. Some of them have a pronounced white look to their veins while others are solid green. I'm nervous about powdery mildew so I've made certain these plants are in full sun areas with lots of airflow. I'd be surprised if it is mildew already since they are so young and haven't really had a crowding chance yet - so I'm leaning towards thinking it is just a natural variation in the plant coloring. I'm hoping people with more experience will agree. :)

Thanks!

to NGA

One of my favorite squash! Mottled leaves are natural but so are green leaves. If you have never grown this squash before, stand back! It gets HUGE, and has flowers and fruits galore. Harvest the fruits when they are baseball sized at the largest or you will have hard as a rock bowling balls in just a couple days. Because of the large size of the plants and the small size of the fruits, its often hard to find them until they are bowling balls.

You have quite a few plants there. Have you ever eaten squash blossoms? Yummy!

Daisy

I had one squash plant last year that only ever got blossoms so this year I resolved to have more than one so the male and females would both show up at the same time and I could get squash! I might have over done it. I was having a hard time getting the seeds to germinate so I just planted ALL the seeds and well, I'm a sucker for not killing extras. I ended up creating a whole new garden area just for some of them - because who doesn't need another garden area?

I wanted to try blossoms last year but never wanted to take any so this year game on!

Thank you for the advice on the leaves! That makes me very happy. I was nervous for my babies. I have only planted tatume so I'm planning to allow one squash to get old and hard so I can harvest the seeds for next year. There aren't any nearby neighbors growing any squash so the seeds *should* be true.

Thanks again!

As true as a squash can be.... You've already seen that. It will be interesting to see if the mottled vines have mottled fruits and the green vines will have green fruits. As this species is open-pollinated, you should be able to save seeds that come true to the parents. Just hope no one plants another squash near you.

Yup, that mottled look is completely normal. Not all squashes have those mottled leaves but many do. I personally think it is very pretty.

Me too! Though as far as I can tell none of my neighbors for blocks and blocks even have a garden. That will be interesting to watch the mottled leaves through the generations. I'm glad I got the mix now!

Thanks both of you.