Thanks for the great recipes! We planted heirloom zucchini seeds this year and they are coming in strong. We will have tons in no time. I so glad to be able to add some recipes to bag of tricks. I have a great recipe for zucchini bread. I have tried many zucchini bread recipes in the past and this is the very best bread! It is very moist. I'm sure you will love it! Zucchini Bread 1 c zucchini 3/4 c nuts (optional) 1 c any dried fruit (optional) 1 1/4 c flour 3/4 c sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 2 eggs 1/2 c melted butter 1/2 c vanilla yogurt 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp citrus zest Pre heat oven to 350â¢. Grate zucchini, dry and set aside in small bowl. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in large bowl and set aside. In medium bowl whisk eggs, melted butter, yogurt, vanilla and zest. Fold into bowl of dry ingredients. Mix well. Add zucchini, nuts and dried fruit. Place in prepared 9X5 pan. This recipe can be easily double. Enjoy! ~Tina~

It seems to be a bit of a vicious circle regarding what books are in stock. Same goes too for what plants garden centres stock. A brief look at the history of gardening in Qld shows that initialy people struggled with trying to grow plants in climates not suitable for them. It seems that this circle has not really been broken yet although the range of sub-tropical /tropical plants available is certainly becoming more readily available. I guess though that many of us will always want to grow something from outside our climate. As for books, another good William Warren co-authored book I would recommend is 'Thai Garden Style'. It give a really good overview of the different regions for garening in Thailand from the coastal areas in the South to the highlands of the North.

I have grown Tatume here a couple of times. While it outcompetes squash bugs, the squash vine borers still can kill it in a year when they are really bad. I don't grow it any more because we liked the flavor/texture of Seminole harvested young (baseball to softball-sized) better than Tatume. It is a huge space hog too, and because I already grow 6-10 kinds of C. moschatas most years, the last thing I need is a space hog that isn't as tasty as they are. Bon, I couldn't help noticing how many of my favorite Texas horticulturalists (Sam Cotner, Malcom Beck, Howard Garrett) were in Howard Garrett's story about Malcom's pumpkin. (Mr. Garrett and Mr. Beck write extensively on organic gardening and all their books are excellent, and Mr. Cotner wrote THE book on growing Vegetables in Texas. I've worn out 3 copies of it and am on my 4th.) Jay White, by the way, writes regularly for Texas Gardener magazine (as does Greg Grant) and their articles and columns are the first ones I read when a new magazine arrives. It is a well-known and well-understood phenomenon that healthy plants grown in healthy soil are more disease tolerant and more pest tolerant than less healthy plants. When pests relentlessly attack plants, I try to figure out what it is about those specific plants that make them less healthy and, therefore, more alluring to pests and to diseases. Sometimes it is obvious to me because the plants under attack are growing in less healthy soil. Sometimes it is something much more subtle---like cool-season plants that are beginning to be subjected to hotter temperatures than they like. Howard Garrett makes a convincing argument for us to grow our brassicas in the fall only in this part of the country because they have less pests since they are less stressed in cooler conditions---and I believe he is right about that. And, there are some pests, like grasshoppers, that relentlessly attack everything still green in the hot summer months, whether the plants are healthy and happy are not. So, for every "rule" that we observe, their is an exception, and I find grasshoppers to be one of the exceptions to the rule that healthy plants in healthy soil are not attacked by pests and diseases. I grew up eating yellow summer squash for as far back as I can remember and nothing I've ever grown as a more pest-tolerant substitute for it is 100% acceptable. When I want yellow squash, I simply want yellow squash---nothing else will do. So, in order to have it, I just grow it in low tunnel rows under row cover and hand-pollinate it. I feel like I don't have to settle for less in my own garden, and growing Tatume instead of the yellow squash I really want is, indeed, settling for less. You'll never know how you feel about Tatume until you grow it yourself. I just wasn't crazy about the flavor and didn't find it to be a really heavy producer either. To be fair to Tatume, it never will look like a heavy producer when it is grown adjacent to Seminole because Seminole outproduces it (and everything else) every single time. There is a reason Seminole is a perennial fave in our garden----it is beaten everything else for about 15 years now, and that track record is hard to break. It has been around forever....I can remember it being on seed racks in Texas when I was a child, although I think then it likely was sold as Calabacita, because that is the name that pops into my head every time I see a packet of the seeds. For squash vine borer tolerance or resistance, as George noted, C. moschatas will win every time and, for me, the C. agyrospermas like White Cushaw, Green-Striped Cushaw and Orange-Striped Cushaw are in second place. Tatume might come in third, or actually, a distant fourth behind every kind of yellow summer squash that exists when grown under row cover. YMMV. You can grow any squash or pumpkin you want if only you'll grow them under summerweight row cover, tulle netting, mosquito netting, etc. and hand-pollinate. Does it take longer and a bit more effort? Sure it does, but it is worth it to avoid the heartbreak of losing plants to the dastardly SVBs. Dawn

Fabulous thread. No book idea, sadly. I just keep buying titles from my favorite designers which are not particularly instructive, per se. I will check out the Emily Henderson book. Thank you.