Rampicantes are my favorite squash! If you have room for a trellis they can be trained to climb pretty easily, somewhere I have a picture of mine from last year covering an arbor.
They also make a great winter squash. Last year there was one that hid in the leaves near the ground until it was too big to use as a zucchinni. I let it ripen so I could save the seeds. After I harvested it, I also left it on the counter in an out of the way spot so I could get an idea firsthand about it’s keeping properties. It was still solid and fresh-looking 5 months later in February when I cut it open. What’s more, the flesh was so unbelievably sweet that at first I thought someone had dumped sugar in the blender with it when I wasn’t looking! If you use it in a recipe, use only half the sugar - or less - that the recipe calls for, or else it will be overly sweet. Even better, look for recipes that you can taste as you go so you can tailor the amount of sugar, since the sweetness of the squash might vary.
Oh, one more tip, when using rampicantes like zucchinni, peel before cooking. The skin has something in it that turns bitter when cooked. I learned that after ruining a whole batch of soup.
The rampicantes sound terrific! Thanks for the tips about peeling them, and about watching the sugar in recipes. I had heard that they can be very sweet as a winter squash, but I hadn’t heard about the bitter skin before.
One of the reasons I am not going to try growing it until next year is because I need to build a strong trellis. I’ve seen pictures of the vines, and rampant is a very good description!