Thanks, everyone! Mine are getting fairly large now, and I was afraid it would be overly large and "tough", but like I said, I've never grown them before. I planted seeds in late March, they tolerated a couple of frosts and a snow in April. They are very vigorous and seem to be tough plants, but some of the squash are already about 8-9 inches long- still white/green in color. The produced and grew much faster than I expected :). Someone asked about Fall in Texas. We don't really have much Fall. We go from 100+ degrees at the beginning of Sept to cool spells coming in late September. Then it cools off slightly, but never really gets cold until late Nov. It's more like this: Winter consists of mild weather with occasional freezes, quickly warming up back to the 60's or 70's within a couple of days. Then Spring which is cool nights with days often getting up to the high 80's and 90's. Last June, we had consistent 100 degree days in the middle of the month which went into September. It's very unpredictable, but I generally grow a spring garden from March through June, and a winter garden from October until March. Mrs H

FWIW, and slightly OT: This is my first year using the Early Prolific Straight Necks. While I am already loving the "Early & Prolific" nature of these, as well as the "magazine photo quality" of them, I do notice that they don't have as much flavor as the crooknecks that I've grown in the past. The zucchini variety that I have is Black Beauty, I believe, and again, I sense that the flavor is lacking. I have another variety in there that's not ready yet...some Hybrid thing that had a mere 6 seeds in the packet, and it's orangey-yellow & white spotted. Am anxious to find out what that tastes like. So take all this with a few grains of salt...the flavor will be better for it ;)

I routinely have deer nibble, bug try, hoe smack, and so on scar / mark up the outskirts of winter squash. They taste the same. Be suspicious of uniform, blemish free food. I have a huge 70 lb pumpkin that has all kinds of exterior blemishes and looks decidedly flat, and we're still going to carve up a storm come Halloween, having a DD who worries far more about outward appearances than I do.

All of my butternut vines have died about halfway out from the base and still get plenty of new growth. I have about 6 large squash per vine and seem to be doing fine, except for the dead leaves/stems on the back end. The main part of the vine appears to be still green and healthy. I thought this was just a basic growth pattern of the vine. My vines are about 100 days old and I definitely have no SVB on these plants.