random seeds?

[desertlady]

Have you ever plant random seeds from packets that youve bought ?? I planted straight eight cucumbers seeds 8 weeks ago, now I am getting something that looks like canteloupe. it looks like a bulb !. the leaves does look like squash. What the heck am I planting ??? I will wait few more weeks and see what I got ! Lucky I have other cucumbers planted. or I think that what they are !!

 

[lesa]

There are round, ball shaped cukes- but I would think the picture on the pack would have shown that? Well, get ready for a surprise!

 

[digitS']

I have had contaminated seed now & then. That can be interesting - there are 4 "Mystery Girl" tomatoes in the garden this year . I think I got the mother plant of the hybrid Early Girl last year, instead of the Early Girl itself. There were just 2 plants that showed up out of a couple hundred that I started in 2 different sowings of EG in 2011.

The danger with cukes and all in that family is that you may already have had volunteers in your soil. I had the neighbor's volunteer squash/pumpkin all over my garden one year because we used the same tractor guy for tilling. They were in my squash patch and I had a difficult time separating them from what I'd planted . Their fruit was totally useless - more like a gourd.

There were some volunteer melons in the compost that I used to hill the potatoes yesterday. I felt bad about tossing them back in the new part of the compost instead of transplanting them somewhere. Still, my melon patch is miles away and - so far - the rabbit has left the squash, cukes, and melons alone there. I'm not really prepared to roll the dice on what was in the compost altho' the plants looked real healthy :/.

Steve