Heroes Not Zombies

Here’s this year’s crop of pumpkins from the “potager” (veggie garden).

We don’t have a big plot and having lived in a top floor apartment for almost 20 years before emigrating from Scotland to France, we are pretty much beginner gardeners. I love it though.

Last year we planted seeds of several different pumpkin varieties and really come harvest time we had way too much! Still got some roasted pumpkin purée in the freezer for this coming winter’s soup. So, this year we decided to cut way back and planted just three. The butternut squash you can see on the left there, the pretty little orange ones, and that pale green one. (I’m afraid I’m still terrible with names. I could find out if you asked me, but I tend not to bother getting to know their names)

But wait, I hear you say, what about the big guy?! The one in the front with the nobbly bits on! Well, he grew all by himself.

I learned how to turn grass cuttings and garden waste into compost and have been spreading it on the veggie patch each year for about three years now. Last year we read about the “No dig” method of gardening, so took that advice and just spread the compost thickly over the surface of the plot last winter.

Well, clearly there was a pumpkin seed in there, cos this plant began to grow. And it grew, and it grew and it grew! Huge thick green prickly stems, miles of thin, tightly spiralled creepers which caught onto to anything they could reach, and it spread along one side of the patch, turned down a second side, then along a third side, before heading back to its origin. All the time winding itself into the tomato plants, the courgettes, and anything else that was growing there. But despite all this green growth, and believe me there was a LOT of it, it produced just one gourd.

But what a gourd! Look at it! It’s the biggest of the lot!

So, it seems, the garden is better at producing it’s own crops than I am at managing it! Who knew??

I think that’s one of the things I like best about the garden – the surprises, the number of times it makes me wonder, stirs up feelings of awe, and fills me with joy! Then fills me with the tastiest vegetables I’ve ever eaten. Seriously who knew tomatoes could be so varied and tasty? That cucumber was so refreshing and delicious, that radishes were so SPICY! I could go on…….but I won’t!