Garden Surprises
Surprise Spaghetti Squash in the Honey Suckle
Although I’ve been gardening for years, I still consider myself a novice picking up gardening tips from family, books, television, podcasts, magazines, you name it. I’m a sponge when it comes to research and gathering useful information about the garden. Both my mother and mother-in-law is and was avid gardeners and my grandmother on my mom’s side lived on a farm, so I know it’s in the genes as far as interest and passion goes. I also know I still have tons to learn about the subject. As I’ve noted in past blogs, 2020 and the pandemic inspired me to experiment with different gardening ideas and explorations which has been great fun and I’ve learned a lot. But the garden can also provide surprises of its own which is always a delight. One such discovery that Andy and I made early in the season was our surprise spaghetti squash that mysteriously appeared in the area we call the back 40 (which is a small, raised bed in our alley). We could tell from the leaves that it was from the squash family but as I’d not planted any vegetables in that area, we had no idea where it came from. I did plant spaghetti squash the year before in a planter box along the fence, but nothing had come of it. One theory we have is perhaps our neighborhood squirrel got a hold of a squash from somewhere else and dinned on the fence and dropped a seed, but we can’t confirm that theory.
Our surprise veggie continued to grow and then one summer morning we were out surveying the garden and noticed a lovely yellow spaghetti squash nestled in our honeysuckle plant that was cascading down the fence. The squash had grown up the fence vertically and was now weaving itself through the Honeysuckle. We harvested that squash, roasted, and served it up with Chicken Parmesan! It is so rewarding when you can create a meal fresh from your own garden. We had lots of squash flowers after that and a few little starter squashes only to then have the shrivel up and die. We were thankful for our single squash and just carried on. Then low and behold I was getting into my car one day and noticed another squash peeking out of the Honeysuckle by the gate of the fence! It was later in the season now and the nights were starting to cool down so we weren’t sure how long this one would last but we keep an eye on it and let it continue to grow. Then a frost warming was announced on the news, and I had Andy pick it so that we wouldn’t lose it with the hope that it was rip enough. I then did some research on Spaghetti squash to figure out how and at what point you are supposed to harvest them and what happens if you pick them too early?
From my research I learned that you could continue to have them ripen once they’ve been picked if you put them in a sunny warm spot. So that’s what I’ve started to do, we shall see what happens! Happily, this story doesn’t end here! This weekend I was working on cleaning up the bed in the back 40, cutting back dead Zinnias, clipping my Iris leaves, and pulling out spent Morning Glories and Moon Flower vines. In the process, I noticed the squash plant was looking wilted and figured it was nailed by the frost and so gave it a tug too only to have another well ripped squash jumps out at me from the Honeysuckle! Image my surprise because this one was completely hidden on both sides of the fence! Somehow the Honeysuckle must have shielded it from the frost or kept it warm or something because this bad boy was not squishy and was a beautiful yellow color which is what spaghetti squash look like when they are ripe (at least the ones in the grocery store look like this one did so I am assuming it is healthy and ready to be eaten!) So, this unplanned rogue vegetable proved to be a wonderful surprise and tasty addition to our summer garden this year.
Postscript/PS: I had another surprise on the other side of the garage behind the trash and recycle bins this summer. How I missed it I will never know but when I was emptying the vacuum cleaner one Saturday morning, I discovered another rogue plant, this one in the form of an heirloom yellow plumb tomato plant! It was not a small plant so again I’ve no idea how I never noticed it before! My theory on how this one came about was that the year before I did have tomato plants of this kind growing in a raised bed that I had moved earlier this summer. I’m thinking that the tomato plant from last summer perhaps dropped a fruit and it stayed there, decayed, and then took root! I’ve gotten several tasty morsels from that plant and when we got that freeze warning I decided to see if I could dig it up and transplant it in a pot so that I could then continue to grow it in the green house in the garage. It had a tone of tiny tomatoes on it, and I just hated the idea of losing all of them. So, I dug it up and it’s in the greenhouse, looking a little worse for wear but still giving me yellow tomatoes!
As I was getting the back 40 bed ready for winter, I got to thinking how these rogue veg plants came to be and decided to do a little experiment of my own. I took three of the yellow tomatoes that’d just picked and pushed them, skin, seeds and all into the soil and manure I’d just put down with the hope that instead of a happy accident next year I will find that these little tomatoes also decided to take root and thus complete my ‘controlled garden surprise/experiment… we shall see next spring!
