Surprise Garden Plot

So here’s what happened.

Back in May, I hadn’t planted anything but a few containers: tomatoes, lettuce, basil, parsley. We’d been thinking of moving, plus I just hadn’t had time to plant the plot we’d used last year.

Suddenly, wooden markers appeared around my garden plot. They were marked “driveway.”

You see, our house has two in-law-style apartments attached to it, and they’re occupied by the landlord’s young adult daughters. They’re great neighbors, but they do each have a car, so their dad had decided to put in an extra driveway – right on top of my garden plot. To be fair, I obviously wasn’t using it.

Within a few weeks, we had a brand-new gravel driveway and a new raised-bed garden plot. Our landlord had kindly built a frame and moved the garden soil into it.

Before I could plant anything, however, it began sprouting squash plants.

“Okay,” I thought. “That must be from the zucchini I never harvested last year.”  A tomato plant sprang up, too; obviously from the tomatoes I’d let fall!

The squash plants grew bigger, but no flower or fruits appeared. I was worried, and asked for advice on Twitter. @jeanannvk suggested a dose of fertilizer and a few more days. I sprinkled fertilizer, watered well, and

waited. Sure enough, the first blossoms appeared!

I waited hopefully for fruit, looking forward to a large zucchini harvest, and possibly some zucchini-canning.

Well, the fruits are appearing, and they’re PUMPKINS!  I didn’t know that the landlord had also added the contents of our shared compost bin to the raised bed.  The compost bin had had the remains of our Halloween pumpkin in it, and the seeds hadn’t decomposed.

I keep looking for zucchini, but I haven’t seen anything that even looks like a hybrid. Fortunately, we are still able to enjoy excellent zucchini from our local farmers’ market.  And the kids, of course, are delighted with the pumpkins.