favorite winter squash?

[tjg911]

i only grow butternut for 2 reasons - they are immune to the squash vine borer due to having solid stems and they store until april. i have tried many hollow stemmed varieties but the svb just kills them.

i had problems with zucchini and yellow squash as they also are hollow stemmed but since they produce fruits so fast that while the svb often did kill them i would get a lot of eating before it happend. i discovered a few years ago that if you plant out your zucchini and yellow squash after the svb has laid it's eggs (here that is july 4th) that you can have zucchini and yellow squash plants that don't die as all the eggs have been laid and the svb life cycle is over.

so this year i planted delicata squash but it has a typically long winter squash maturity (about 100 days) so waiting until the 4th of july is impossible so i covered them with floating row covers and will remove them on july 4th. i expect to have healthy plants and get squash in september. i never considered this when planting other hollow stemmed winter squashes!

what are your favorite winter squash? i am interested in flavor and storage.

thanks,

tom