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First time gardener, I wanted tomatoes, cucumbers a few zucchini. But what I really longed for was spaghetti squash. I love it and had stopped buying it when it was $6-8 per squash. I really hoped I would get 3-5 squash. Oh my. I planted some seeds and worried over them. Nothing seemed to happen. So I bought some seedlings. Then the agricultural department at our community college had a plant sale: $1 per plant, even when it was a pack of 6 seedlings. So I bought a six-pack, and planted everything. Fast forward 2 months. Plants were growing, but I couldn't exactly remember where I had put which plants (OK now I know to write it down). I did not know what the developing fruit looked like. I had planted some lemon cucumbers and was excited to have a developing cucumber, but was it? I spent some weeks being very puzzled. Then it began to dawn on me that I was getting some squash. But some of them did not look right. Fast forward. That six-pack I bought at the community college had 5 spaghetti and ONE PUMPKIN! And, as I then learned, they can cross pollinate. My hope for a few spaghetti squash turned into OVER 50, many of them cross-breeds, and one pumpkin!
Besides pushing plastic labels into the soil for each row, I try to remember to make a "map".
The lables may fade or get lost due to hoeing, but the mapp is forever ... until you lose it!
I make labels from plastic mini-blinds. One broken or old mini-blind gives enough labels for years of gardening. I write on them with a penciol (thich mechanical pencil). Some use paint pens. Magic Markers fade.
You can protect the markers from hoeing and digging animals by punching a hole in each, an d tieing them with string to adult plants.
That sounds like a very educational garden. I am going to make a wish, for my fall garden. Lots of food to share in a neighborhood with several elderly...looks like you did pretty well
I grew spaghetti squash last year from seed and trained them up a trellis to save room. I didn't get as many as you... but they were beautiful! I froze some and they still kept that nice crunch. I always put my garden plan down on paper. It's nice to refer back to the dates, etc.
Yes, they can cross pollinate, but it won't be in this years harvest. If you save those seeds from this years fruit and plant it next year, then you will get a hybrid fruit.
Everything in your pile of fruit in the picture is not spaghetti squash. Some on the top row are lemon cucumbers, mature. Spaghetti squash comes in two varieties, plain yellow & a hybrid called stripetti. They have stripes on them. That's what the green looking ones probably are.
Bernie
LOL, I wish I had that luck ! Great first time planting! My cuke's and all my squash bit the dust, I had a few of each, than all my plants got a white powdery mildew on them, and started getting rotten on the ends of the fruit very early on, so i gave up. I think I planted to close to each other and not enough room to breath, the cukes were far away from the squash, all plants were in bucket containers, as that was what I had room for. I'm going to try again, but we're waiting to move before I start another garden.
BTW, all my seeds came from the seed rack at Lowes! Maybe that was my biggest mistake!
Here are a few picture's of things that did grow, the moldy leaves, egg plant, and a cucumber plant that was starting to go bad from something, Plus a picture of a 2 different types of cucumbers, I think one was an organic, and the other regular, plus a tomato is hidden in the picture. I got rid of the seed packets as I won't be buying from Lowes anymore, otherwise I could tell you what types of seed I used !
I edited to add a note on the picture's description, I couldn't see the picture's clearly till I posted them.
