It came from the compost heap or The mystery plant from outer space

As you may or may not know, we have a vegetable garden. We also have a compost heap. And sometimes, plants sprout in said compost heap, which is only natural, since compost is intended for fertilizing.

Most of the time, the plants sprouting in the compost heap are just weed, but occasionally you get something useful like a pepper or pumpkin plant.

This year, the compost sprouted what looked like a pumpkin or maybe a zucchini plant, so we rescued the seedling and planted it in the vegetable garden proper, where it thrived and grew to quite epic proportions.

However, once the plant began developing fruit, those fruit turned out to be not zucchini or pumpkins but something quiet different and rather weird.

The mystery squash in the garden. It sure is pretty, but what exactly is it?

Two more mystery squashs.

I asked the internet for ideas regarding the identity of the mystery fruit and the consensus was that it’s probably some kind of summer or maybe winter squash, probably a hybrid.

As for how they came to be, in the fall we always buy pumpkins and squashes for pickling and cooking from a local farmer (they’re cheaper to buy than to cultivate). This year, we also had a decorative arrangement of smaller and particularly colourful squashes and gourds next to our front door in fall and early winter, since the farmer where we always buy the pumpkins and squashes has a very broad selection. You can see some photos at the end of this post here.

After preparing the pumpkins and squashes, the seeds and other remnants landed on the compost heap. And once the decorative squashs and gourds went mouldy, they ended up on the compost heap as well.

And from that primordial soup of gene material arose the mutant squash from outer space.