As our main garden continues to languish, the gift garden surprises us even more.
It appears we are hosting three different types of hard squash.
One looks like spaghetti squash,
the original vote for pumpkin plant that so many of you chimed in on, and
the cutest little butternut-shaped squash.
This is exciting, after our purchased tomato plant has borne two tomatoes (that I am pretty sure were already on there when I bought it), and one of the pepper plants (though refusing to grow in height) has started a pepper that is about to overtake it in size.
And our beautiful peas were doing pretty well, but after giving us about 10 delicious pods, they gave up the ghost for no apparent reason.
So, yay for volunteer squash. And see, much good can come of doing GAPS Intro, where you eat so much squash that you get sick of toasting the seeds and start throwing them into the compost.
It’s likely that you have more than one squash plant volunteering. A squash will readily hybridize itself, as we found out one year when our acorn squash crossed itself with a butternut: weirdest thing I’d ever seen on a vine (good eating though).
It’s getting too hot for peas, they like early spring. It’s pretty normal for them to die this time of year.