Cucurbita pepo
Origin: Odesa, Ukraine
Improvement status: Landrace
Seeds per packet: ~16
Germination tested 12/2025: 86%
Life cycle: Annual
We're very excited to offer another heirloom variety from Odesa, Ukraine, where EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman has some ancestral heritage (his maternal grandmother's parents met there when his dressmaker great-grandmother walked past a tailor's shop and had to go inside to more closely admire the artistry of the buttonholes sewn by the proprietor, Nate's great-grandfather!). This is a vining zucchini originally collected in a market in Odesa in the 1980s. It very much resembles the kousa-type summer squash of the Middle East — with pale green fruit, ripening to yellow, and never achieving the baseball-bat size of more common Italian zucchini types — a testament to Odesa's situation as a cultural crossroads. We're not sure when this type of zucchini arrived there, but it seems to have become quite common and favored (other seed companies offer a different strain of Odesa squash that is similar, though we've found this one to be superior). The fruit ripens to a roughly 12 to 16-inch yellow cylinder, four to six inches in diameter. The plants are not bush-type at all, but very much vining, though they are content to sprawl around and do not require a trellis. You should harvest the immature fruit frequently to encourage additional fruiting.
GROWING TIPS: Direct-sow after danger of frost has passed, or start indoors a couple weeks earlier. Space plants at least a foot apart and leave plenty of room for them to sprawl (4 to 6 feet in all directions).
