yes and yes

Cracking often happens in tomatoes, where it's usually caused by a long dry spell followed by a lot of water. In tomatoes, the inner parts absorb water quickly, faster than the skin, which grows slowly. In tomatoes, the insides are especially juicy, so water absorption will be especially efficient. Not so in squash, BUT, in winter squash, the skin actually turns hard, such that the skin can't grow much at all, and lots of water encourages growth. So any growth on the inside will strain the skin.

As to the varieties, cross pollination is only an issue if you're saving seeds. If you have different squash showing up, well, you planted different squash. Strange squash suggest some strangeness in the seeds that you planted.

Agree with Dan. The effects of cross pollination do not show up until the next generation. It would only show up this season if you used seeds saved from last year's crop.

Thanks for that clear explanation of cross pollination 🙂

FWIW, often the skin can scar over when winter squashes are damaged, cracked tomatoes too, as long as they're not fully ripe yet, and are still developing.

Sorry, don't quite understand "the effects .......would only show up this season if you used seeds saved from last year's crop." .? I am in Canada and always use seeds from last years crop, we only have one crop of winter squash per year, so can't use seeds from the same year.

The seeds we used were from a butternut, acorn, and a bittercup squash from a nearby farm. These squashes tasted and looked as expected. Are you saying that the cross pollination happened last year on the farm and not in our garden this year ? I get that, but still, why is one and the same plant grown from one seed only producing quite different looking squashes as you can see in pictures 2, 3 and 4 ?

Are you sure that you have different squashes on the same plant? The vines in my garden criss-cross each other and I couldn't tell which is which until I get a baby.

Absolutely sure!

Am I understanding this correctly? You planted seeds saved from squashes you purchased from a local farm, and not from packaged seed?

WIERD! One looks like a Hubbard and it's mate looks like a pumpkin. I can't imagine this.

Thats right, we planted seeds saved from squashes purchased last fall from a local farm, and not from packaged seed.

Cross pollination CANNOT affect the fruit, it will affect seeds. That "crack" looks exactly like damage healing, odd it is a nice circle.

The previous statement is a bit confusing :-) Cross pollination can and does affect fruit......but only second generation fruit grown from harvested seeds that were subject to cross pollination.

If growing from packaged seeds, this year's fruit will (should) be true to type. It is usually only with hand collected seeds that you run a risk of strange fruit development.

Again, different squash on the same stem is a matter of reversion. It just means that the squash plant, at sometime in its history, was cross-pollinated, and genes for both kinds of fruit are independently represented in the plant. The crossed version should dominate, but it is *possible* that one or the other can assert itself. As noted, having different squash plants in the bed is just a matter of a seed handling mistake.

Using saved seeds from plants that are not self pollinating is always a crapshoot. Squash is known to cross easily.