It basicly is a butternut on steroids like the similar Neck pumpkin. I usually think of the ripe color as Tan. Like Trombocino it can be used as summer squash when young. The in between stage is to be avoided. You have a long season so expect to ripen before cool temps. Takes about 4 months from emergence. If you planted in April expect mature squash in August.

OK, tan like butternut. Thanks. The lengthy maturation time is, I gather, what gets people worried about cool temperatures. My season is, however, very lengthy, as long at the SVBs don't get it. I've heard that these squash are particularly resistant to SVBs. Moreso than Butternut. We'll see. In my neck of the woods, Butternut are "resistant" to SVBs, in that the SVBs have to work really hard to destroy it. But they often do! I've got hard working SVBs.

Wow, just a few weeks later and several of them are humungus and completely light tan in color. Is it really ready to eat, or will it continue to ripen? Butternuts never mature this fast for me. Not even the end of May, and I already have lots of what appear to be ripe Tahitian Melon squash. I ate one as a summer squash (it fell off the vine and needed to be recovered) and it was quite good, but without the sweetness that I would expect from a fully ripe, mature moschata. So I want to be sure that these are fully ripe before I pick them.

No problems yet with SVBs.

That looks pretty light in color, wait until full tan and the stem is dry and corky. Here the pickleworms are a worst problem than SVB in summer. They attack cucumbers and melons in addition to squash.

Thanks. Doing some deep research, I find a lot of people worried that these squash will be ripe before the first frost - ha! I'm hearing "deep tan color", "stems begin to shrivel", and "impenetrable with a fingernail". Mine are light tan, the stems are not really beginning to shrivel. Maybe I'll let them go a few more weeks.

I agree with Farmerdill, the squash in the photo does not appear to be fully ripe. Years back (when I was much younger) I was able to grow Tahitian here. It took most of my season, and not all ripened... but I did get a few. Very deep tan when fully ripe. I grew Waltham butternut that year too, and to me, the Tahitian was not that much sweeter than a fully-ripened butternut... but MUCH larger.

That Tahitian was the first squash I ever saved seeds from, and I did not yet understand about crossing. When I grew that Tahitian seed the next year, many of the plants were obvious crosses with Waltham - with short, wide necks. They looked & tasted like butternut squash, but some weighed up to 20 pounds! We ate a lot of squash that winter.