So much for my freak-of-nature expertise in the garden. Remember that enormous, magnificent zucchini I grew?
Well, apparently, it’s not a zucchini. It’s a pumpkin. I guess. I really don’t know. I’m assuming because it looks like a pumpkin, it’s a pumpkin (but you know the old wives tale about how to spell assume, don’t you?). I do, too, and I don’t prefer to do either.
Maybe a pumpkin seed slipped into the zucchini seed packet at the “packaging plant.” It’s possible, though I don’t remember seeing anything that “stood out from the crowd” as I was dropping seeds into the dirt. Not that I’d notice. I’m very intent on my business when I’m planting. Have it down to a real system.
Could be a zucchini-pumpkin hybrid. Is there such a thing? Could even be a stray seed from the compost dirt. I did buy pumpkins last fall…to carve Jack-o-lanterns and make pumpkin pie. It’s possible one survived, though rather unlikely it would have conveniently ended up in the exact row for its specific family of plants — in the exact spot I planted the zucchini!
It’s a good theory, now that I think about it. Spotting “stray” sprouts across my garden, I transplanted several of these accidental compost “thrivers” (I’m a sucker for a plant with the will to fight for survival). While I don’t recall this particular one, it could have made its way there. Happens.
At this point, it doesn’t matter, does it? I have a pumpkin. I’m accepting it as a pumpkin and while not thoroughly overjoyed, I am still proud to call it my own. After all, I grew it myself.
Check back in October and see if I’m as good growing pumpkins I mean to grow as I am with those I don’t!
Chris says
Yeah! Pumpkins. I get excited, easy in a garden, and I have no idea what it is about pumpkins, but they are absolutely some of my favorites and get me all in a garden frenzy. Well, I do love the fact that they have this amazing storage capacity in their miracle packaging. A friend and I were eating 10 month old pumpkins one year and that made us think if we could grow pumpkins we would never starve. Besides, pumpkins are so often neglected as a commoner vegetable instead of our other more exotic garden offerings, so I always like sticking up for the humble pumpkin…
Cheers!
gardenfrisk says
Easy is good, not to mention versatile!