Thanks for the input so far... I purchased these plants from a local garden store on May 27 and transplanted them the next day with a top dress of "home-grown" compost. I have not used any fertilizer (yet). I had not thought that my other plants were not doing so well - but I took a peek at them this morning and I definitely see now that they are not really a deep/dark green, but also on the yellow-ish side. Guess they just looked great relative to the Romanesca. Like I mentioned, they've only been in the ground for two weeks and we've had some cool, wet weather, so I would not expect them to be particularly sprawling at this point. I have to admit that I have no idea how my base soil is (pH, nutrient levels), so the nitrogem/pH may defintiely be an issue. I have some Espoma Garden-Tone (granular, 3-4-4)and some Neptune's Harvest Fish/Seaweed Mix (liquid, 2-3-1). Would either of these help now...even as a desperate measure? As for the powdery mildew...the leaves of the Romanesca have these small whitish/grayish powdery patches - I think you can see them in the two Romanesca photos in the above link (the other two photos - the cocozelle and the pumpkin - do not have these). I'm not certain this is powdery mildew...just was my first thought.

I know this is an older thread, but for the sake of posterity, I thought I'd leave a response. I e-mailed growitalian.com, and the owner said that it's "probably the same, or very close". What he sells is a deeply ribbed zucchini from Rome with very good flavor. However, he can't guarantee it's the same, as one can get surprisingly different results from different seed sources. I have always had great experiences with Franchi seed, so I'm torn. Whenever I've bought heirloom seed from them, plants have been way healthier, more consistent, and more productive than the results reported from seeds from "artisan" American sources, with no loss of flavor. Unsurprising if their primary target is the very demanding Italian market. If I have the space, I might do a side by side grow-out to assess any differences.

Poking around some more, I found relevant discussions at the URLs below. One gardener, "Snibb", uses some heavy-duty stakes (green t-posts or other) as support & uses rope or velcro strips to tie the zucchini plants to the stakes as they grow -- there are photos. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2156573/zucchini http://thewealthyearth.com/growing-zucchini-vertically/ Hard to imagine, given the size and weight of the plant I had last season, but I may have to give it a try!

Not unusual for first fruits. If it persists you may need to consider hand pollination as usual cause is incomplete pollination.