Our garden this year was a huge success! One of the cool things we found in our garden was a volunteer (meaning it grew on it's own) squash plant. Most volunteers I just pull up like weeds but for some reason I let this one live and the result was a cross between a pumpkin and a zucchini. We haven't quite decided what to do with them (there were 2) . Carve them for Halloween or try and see if they are eatable. I think Cameron is dreaming of the ultimate combination of pumpkin/zucchini bread all in one loaf.
Some of you might be wondering how this plant came to be. Last year in our garden we had both pumpkins and zucchini. So when the fruit was forming on my pumpkins none of the male blossoms had opened yet (and I hate to loose a pumpkin because it didn't get pollinated) so I took a make blossom off of my zucchini and pollinated my female pumpkin blossom with my male zucchini blossom. This doesn't do anything to the pumpkin that year it will grow normal and look just like it should. It does though mess with seeds of that pumpkin. If you take the seeds from a pumpkin that as been pollinated with another kind of pollen then you never know what you could get! How did it end up in the garden again. Well after the garden is done we turn under all the old plant material into the garden for extra nutrients for next year. That includes our jack-o-lanterns from Halloween and some of them must have had a few seeds left over in them. Not a big surprise given the age of our kids. And there you go all you NEVER wanted to know about cross pollination.
WOW, that is pretty cool.
ReplyDelete