volunteer veggie

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DigMontana Libby, MT(Zone 4b) May 20, 2007

Yesterday I was prepping the garden for more planting. I was near one of my raised beds when I noticed several squash plants inside the raised bed. It was a new bed put in last fall, so I have never planted in it yet.

I figured out what happened. I keep all my kitchen scraps in a big metal bowl. When it gets full I send a kid out to dump it in my compost bin. Last fall I bought some squash at the store, but only bought it once because it was so expensive. threw the scraps in the bowl and this time told him to just dump it in the garden next to the raised bed. He spilled some of it in the raised bed.

I'm very glad to have some volunteers, even though that was going to have beans planted in it. I will just plant around the squash.

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MaryE Baker City, OR(Zone 5b) May 20, 2007

What kind of squash? If you don't remember the name can you tell us what it looked like, color, shape, approximate size. Some of them get huge and would leave no room for beans unless you can direct the squash to grow in a different direction if it is a trailing kind. You might have a bush type but that could get big, some of my bush types have grown to 5 ft across.

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DigMontana Libby, MT(Zone 4b) May 21, 2007

I remember buying butternut. It was orangish in color and shaped like a pear. Thanks for the reminder. It is right at one end of the raised bed. I'am also growing beans in other areas in the garden as well as pole beans.

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MaryE Baker City, OR(Zone 5b) May 21, 2007

That one is going to ramble and the vines will cover a lot of ground. However, you can train it to go into some unused sunny space. It will take quite a bit of water. You can shovel prune the vines if they just get way too big, and after it has about 6-8 small squash just keep snipping off those vines and any other blossoms to force the energy of the plant into developing and ripening them. Be sure to protect it from frost, both early and late. If the fruits get frosted they will spoil sooner, or just turn to mush on the vines, making the whole mess a candidate for the compost pile.

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Zeppy Shenandoah Valley, VA(Zone 6b) May 21, 2007

My first garden, dug out of sod, had volunteer tomatoes. I guess from compost or something. They were terrible. I always pull my volunteers now as they take up lots of valuable space and may not be worth it.

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