Squash And Pumpkins Anyone?

Last year we had a bumper crop of pumpkins and butternut squash in the wilderness garden.  I still have quite a lot all processed and in the freezer to enjoy.  Ed planted butternut  squash and pie pumpkins in the back again this year.  We never thinned the plants or paid a lot of attention to them.  We could see that the plants were lush and saw some fruit along the edges and hanging from the fence. Today when Ed went to the back, the leaves of the squash plants and some of the pumpkin plants were dead.  We were amazed by the number of squash and pumpkins sitting there.

Many of the pumpkins were orange and the squash looked healthy, so Ed picked them and loaded them in his wagon.

I counted 13 pumpkins.  I don't even know how many squash there were.  Ed put three of each in the basement and left  the rest down by the road.  If you drive by here, please help yourself.

The really spooky part is that this huge pumpkin vine that grew on a compost pile is still going strong.  There are even more larger pumpkins lurking beneath its leaves.  Self planted from the seed of a pumpkin left behind last fall, this plant lagged behind the seeds that we planted.  It has now outgrown all that we planted with a span that exceeds forty feet.  The core of the plant has powdery mildew but the outer leaves are still clear.  We believe that powdery mildew ended the plants inside of the fence.  If we miss the predicted frost tonight, one more meal featuring squash blossoms could happen tomorrow.

These pumpkins are much bigger than the others and right now they are still growing.  This vine still has blossoms.  Who knows how many more pumpkins there will be?  Ed will need a bigger tool to  harvest these.  With a garden sometimes it's not about what you need, it's about what you get!