Can you find the watermelon plant? Hint: it is the small. solitary leaf, deeply lobed, amongst this over-run bed of squash vines. The end of the watermelon vine, with two tendrils, is rising out, at lower center. I planted "Ice Box" watermelon seeds several weeks before the squash took over this bed.Before being designated for watermelon, this bed was a dumping ground for plant waste. My composting method, along with most gardeners here at the club, is cold composting. A hole or trench is dug in a fallow bed and vegetative matter is laid in the hole, covered up, and left to decay. It is a nice lazy way to add some organic matter to the soil.
The squash seeds weren't affected by the composting process (in hot composting, the pile gets so hot that all seeds are essentially cooked beyond the ability to germinate). I would have pulled the squash when it first appeared, but I was curious to know what type it was (we eat and compost a variety of squash). I was able to identify this uber-grower when I found a female flower/fruit on a vine today. It came from a French pumpkin called "Cinderella" that was left to molder last fall. The jack-o-lantern sat on top of the bed for about 2 months, refusing to decay, so I ended up taking a shovel to it and breaking it up that way. The pulp of the pumpkin provided the seed with enough moisture and nutrition to get it sprouting.
So here's the infant pumpkin, still sporting its closed and yet-to-be-pollinated female flower. It is about 1" in diameter. Kinda looks like an upside down ice cream cone. I sunk a Japanese garden knife behind the "little guy" for scale and I will chronicle the development of this pumpkin in future posts. And yes, it is absurdly early for starting pumpkins. Lets see what happens, anyway.
