Yep, taters are good, but another reason I recommend zucchini is that where I grew up the soil was all glacial till. Dad was too cheap to buy any topsoil, and my brother and I got tired of sieving out the rocks to get the garden going. So we planted things that would work with our soil, and zucchini was one of those things. Also, potatoes just didn't seem to produce so well for other folks near us. I guess western Washington weather may be too mild for them, but the zucchini liked it well enough. Zucchini seem to do well just about anywhere, under almost any conditions save really dry or really cold. The fact that we could harvest as much as we did growing up and that they even grow a large crop here in the Middle east tells me that this is one vegetable that really works well. Considering too how much more nutrition there is in the zucchini fruit compared to potatoes, maybe culturally we should consider converting our food base even. It can be prepared in as many ways as potatoes (yes, even mashed works). While the fruit admittedly doesn't store as well as potatoes do, dehydration does retain most of the nutritional content, while reducing the storage requirements.

I doubt they will ever be as popular to consume as potatoes. But they are practical, troublefree, darn near foolproof crop that just about anyone can get a bumper crop out of. I loved watching my girls grunt and groan hauling 20 lb zucchinis out of the garden by the wheelbarrow load. That is, until I had to figure out what to do with a counter full of them!