Most zucchini plants will not grow vertically. I tried tying mine up the first time I grew them - they really didn't grow long enough. Last year I used another member's idea of kind of caging them with a large tomato ring with the points up and the largest ring surrounding the plant on the ground. It did kind of keep them contained until SVB decimated them.
The best idea is to plant near the edge of the bed and let them sprawl into the paths between your beds.
Good Luck,
Keski

Yea i had heard about the tomato ring idea as well. I just think itd be very easy for my 1 yr old son to grab em & yank & then bye bye zucchini. Do u think they could take that kind of abuse? Im hoping the nylon netting im going to surround them w will do the same thing, but be a lil harder for my son to destroy. My garden is a very odd layout so if i let my zucs run free they will be resting on concrete. Would that be ok? So far i havent had any problems w any bugs. I do have a mass amount of slugs though, ewwww. Ive been handpicking & killing them. & cinch bugs, but i dont have any grass (which ive read is all they damage, is this true?) So ive been letting them live. But i also would like to attract some predatory insects, bc within the 3 months ive been working in the garden i have only seen 2 ladybugs & no other bugs in general. I have a shady spot that i could plant things in. Any suggestion on flowers i should use? Hopefully the svb isnt too bad in ur area this year keski. Thanks for the idea. I might try it next year, i always loved to experiment! Sorry for all the questions, i just kept thinking of them as i typed lol.

Well, I did anchor my tomato rings down with garden staples.
Marigolds are always recommended. I'm mostly a perennial flower gardener. I think alyssum is supposed to attract bees for pollination. I am growing some borage which some say helps other veggies, besides being able to eat the flowers, though I haven't tried it.
Concrete would probably get too warm in the sun, but you could try it and see if they like it.
Shady spots are good for things like lettuce, spinach, carrots and most brassicas.
Gotta put dinner on the table.
Later,
Keski

Check out the thread, I think two subjects below, titled "Zucchini". I found this from 2008 and brought them up to present so I could do it myself. A wealth of knowledge and pictures.

You certainly can grow zucchini vertically-been doing it for years and pictures to show it-which is the reference above.

Ahh hello snibb your just the person i was hoping to talk to! I was wondering how tall do you let the plants get before tieing (sp?) them to the stake? Mine are about 8" right now. They have no "clear" part of the stem, its all covered w the stems of the leaves. Im growing black zucchini NOT black beauty. Are there any varieties you favor & would recommend for next year?

Hello there justkeepdigging. Ive grown several kinds of zucchini. For the past few years I've been growing that 8-ball. It tasted great but it wasn't as plentiful as we hoped. So, I'm going back to my old standard-black beauty. I end up tying mine when they start to fall over. And that's about where you're plants are right now. It's probably being tied about every 8 inches. Just be careful that you don't break the stem while your tying it. I doesn't need to be real tight-just tight enough to hold it up. I then use the large leaves that grow to be huge for shading the squares around the zucchini plant. That way I have some "cooler" squares to do things with lettuce-which is a lot harder to grow in hot weather. But it can be done with a little work. You should check out my ebook. There's some stuff in there that might give you a lot of ideas....it's on my website. Hope that helps...