mutant cross-vegetables

[IthacaJeff 151]

Forgot to ask this last fall, but I had an odd thing happen. We planted cucumbers and pumpkins

next to each other, and lo and behold, we had some sort of cross breeding and grew orange, fat

cukes. No kidding. Disgusting tasting things the kids named "pukes" (pumpkin cukes).

Anyone have any experience with this?

Jeff

[tarcoleo 119]

Jeff-

Cucurbits are funny creatures. Once I grew every variety of squash for which I could find

seed in the same compact garden just to experience the various flavors and textures of

the family. The next year the seeds from the best were planted. Generally, the second

generation seeds produced the expected result, but there was one that was very different.

This squash was gord-like with a hard shell but had a wonderfullysweet meat. You could

cook it and serve it in its own dish. Seeds from this were planted the following year and

the result was not what was hoped for. In stead a soft green tasteless squash resulted.

You say that you obtained a cross between cucumbers and pumpkins? Presumably, that

had to happen the following year from either the cucumber of pumpkin seeds; you could

not have seen a cross breed until they had cross polllenated and produced some kind of

hybrid seed. Not a botanist, but was just wondering. (smile)

Tom

[IthacaJeff 151]

I guess it is possible that one of the seed bags had these cross-breed seeds in it. I guess they could have

been left over from the prior year. Odd, odd, odd.

Jeff

[6wheeler 641]

Never heard of that happening. I have planted squash and cukes in the same garden with no bad results. But I never put the pumpkins by anything because they spread so bad. So I guess I don't know if they are compatable. I have a pumpkin patch that is only used for "punkins' for the grandbrats". Don't put your squash and melons together, they turn out nasty. On a strange note, We had a bad year for pumpkins 2 years ago so Grandma got the little ones some pumpkins at the grocery store. After Halloween I chucked em' out behind the woods for the chickens to plunder (they free range). Last year, we had pumpkins growing like mad out there. They had some nice size to them and looked very healthy. So, I let them go and they made 10 nice pumpkins. I saved some of the seeds. I am going to try to plant the seeds to see if they do well again. I don't know what kind of pumpkins they were. But, if they are a heritage plant, maybe the seeds can be used over and over. The hybrid type most people plant sometimes will re-grow from the seeds but, they usually start to revert to one of the host plants in the hybrid. If these grow, then I will put some more heritage plants by them to pollinate with another strain.

[dsholler 54]

My brother had the same experience. He the met a local botany expert who told him that cucumkins are a specific cross breed for which you can get seeds, so he assumed that he had grabbed the wrong seed packet. We will never know. His fruit were a bit odd, but they were not too bad tasting

[IthacaJeff 151]

Hi folks;

just in case you are interested, here is a picture of the "puke":