People visiting our vegetable garden earlier this season were heard to remark, "Is this yellow squash over here?" and "I thought you weren't growing squash this year." We responded that we planted no squash this year and we weren't sure what that viny thing in Kevin's section of the garden was.
We decided to let it grow to see what it was as it wasn't twirling itself around any other plants and we were curious. It grew longer but still didn't interfere with the enlarging sunflowers next to it so we kept watching it. It grew lovely yellow blossoms that turned into small green, furry fruits that we didn't recognize. They remained smaller than golf balls so we thought that was the end of our experiment.
The sunflowers harbored a pesty caterpillar species that killed them so when Andy cleared most of the sunflowers out of the area, we had a better view of the mystery vine. When we returned from vacation, I found 2 softball sized, still green and still slightly furry fruits! I showed them to Andy and after a few minutes he proclaimed, "These are cantaloupes!" I wondered how he knew and then he picked up another part of the vine to reveal an almost-ripe melon that couldn't be mistaken for anything other than a cantaloupe.
I suspect that it'll be ripe in the next few days and Andy will give it a try. I hope it's not disgusting but even if it is, it's still fun to know that we inadvertently grew cantaloupes.
No comments:
Post a Comment