Volunteer Squash or Pumpkin

This squash/pumpkin plant appeared from nowhere

Back at the beginning of June, I spotted a very unstrawberrylike plant growing in one of my strawberry pots. I could see at a glance that it was either a pumpkin or a winter squash but which one of the 5 varieties I am growing this year it is, will remain a mystery until it forms a fruit – if it ever does that is. I carefully removed this volunteer (the term used by gardeners to describe the unexpected emergence and growth of a vegetable plant) from the strawberry pot and potted it into some fresh compost and left it in the greenhouse to recover. Once it was big enough, I planted it into a spot amongst the sweet corn and other winter squashes and left it to its’ own devices.

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Squash and Pumpkin weights (update):

My squashes are used as part of our Halloween display

I was really rather taken aback at the size one of my Anna Swartz Hubbard Squashes reached. I’ve never grown this variety before and I have managed to grow two of them, across two different plants and, to be honest, other than the colour they look nothing like each other really which was surprising to say the least.

However, I love growing squash and pumpkins (bet you hadn’t figured that one out :D), in fact I would say that squash and pumpkins are to me what yarn is to a fellow blogger Claire. I squeeze as many as I can into whatever space there may be and try to grow two or three different winter squash varieties, plus a pumpkin each year.

Yellow and green ……

The view from the half barrels

…… those are the colours of my garden at this moment in time. There is some white and a bit of pink and blue dotted around for good measure, oh and let’s not forget the luscious red of the strawberries but on the whole yellow and green are the key colours this week.

Pumpkin, Cheyenne Bush

This is a record of how long this particular set of seeds took to germinate and how they looked at various stages from first appearance to the development of the first set of true leaves and beyond. I hope this will prove useful.

Variety: Cheyenne Bush (Real Seed Catalogue)
Sown indoors: 2nd April 2013
First Seedling: 7th April 2013
Germination: 5 days

Cheyenne Bush newly emerged

Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties …..

Halloween in our house hold is traditionally a fun, happy time, with much laughter as pumpkins are carved, the hall is decorated and the two Mudlets don their costumes and face paints, ready to receive the “trick or treaters”.

The plastic Halloween lanterns are brought down from the attic, dusted off, fitted with new batteries and then we all hold our collective breath as we wait to see if they have survived another year of storage, or if their cheaply made circuitry has finally given up the ghost (excuse the pun), after 3 Halloweens of being dropped, bumped and generally neglected by the over excited Mudlets.

Of course the carving of the pumpkins, grown by me and two of which dwarfed the ‘extra large’ ones a certain well known supermarket had for sale this year (not that I’m bragging), is, according to Mud, the highlight of the day and a task only undertaken by Mud himself.

I grow the pumpkins, he carves the pumpkins, I cook the pumpkins, then we all eat the pumpkins in a variety of guises. This is the way it is and  has always been since the Student Mudlet was at home.

Unfortunately, this year, Halloween coincided with the end of Muds’ week off and, as a result, he was like a bear with a so