Free food
Well, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t resist …
I saw a little leaf poking through my fence, and I thought, hello, that looks like a zucchini tendril. I knew it was seeking the sun on my side of the fence, so I helped it out. Just a gentle little tweek, mind. Next day, it had stretched itself out a bit, and by the end of the week it had made itself quite at home. It quickly scaled the fence, and next thing it was adorned with the beautiful yellow flowers typical of zucchini (courgette). I was secretly pretty pleased, and I could see my neighbour had a whole heap of flowers on his side so I didn’t feel bad.
Then the plant grew little green gourds, and I thought, oh-oh, these are not zucchini, maybe they are some weird sort of loofa things, but I decided to let the plant do its thing. And, that it did. To my surprise, the little green gourds turned into butternut pumpkins! Holy Moley! To reach my age and not to have seen baby butternuts growing adds weight to the saying ‘You are never to old to learn’.
So now I have two beautiful butternut pumpkins to scoff! And here’s a thing I learnt, sort of by myself (well, I wouldn’t admit that I read it on the internet would I?). The pumpkins should really be on the ground because they get too heavy for the plant to hold, and will break off BUT if you put the pumpkins in an old stocking (can’t be black or it will get too hot) you can tie the stocking to the fence for support and the pumpkin can happily grow to maturity. Any rain just goes through the stocking of course. Cool aye!
Read more about pumpkins here
