Veggies planting themselves in compost pile!

Hi - I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else...

We had one of our 6 boxes as a compost pile box. My husband neglected to turn it often enough, and as a result, some of the seeds from food that had been discarded in there long ago spontaneously germinated without any help from me.

To my surprise, I now have healthy plants, flowering and fruiting, that are growing all in a big mass and from all different directions. I have 3 delicata squash fruits from a rotten squash I had used as decoration last fall. I have a cantaloupe maturing. I have several
cherry tomato plants with little green tomatoes.

What's funny is that they are producing fruits even while I have not separated them for spacing, I don't weed it, I don't even water them regularly. They are as healthy and as big as the ones I've been carefully tending. I guess you don't need to babysit your on-purpose-plants as much as you think.

I read that you have to keep delicata squash off the ground while they are maturing, otherwise they'll rot. If I had planted these on purpose I would have been carefully training them up a trellis. But it would be too disruptive to them if I tried to redirect now. Any ideas what I can do to help them? I was thinking of putting plastic plates under the fruits that are touching the ground. Would that work?

brake4squirrels wrote: I was thinking of putting plastic plates under the fruits that are touching the ground. Would that work?

That would probably work fine. If it was my, because I don't have any plastic plates, I would use the extra wood shingles/shim stock I have in the garage. Congrats on all your volunteers!

brake4squirrels wrote:

I read that you have to keep delicata squash off the ground while they are maturing, otherwise they'll rot. If I had planted these on purpose I would have been carefully training them up a trellis. But it would be too disruptive to them if I tried to redirect now. Any ideas what I can do to help them? I was thinking of putting plastic plates under the fruits that are touching the ground. Would that work?

If I were you, I'd just lay down newspaper under them. That's what I did w/my sugar baby watermelons that weren't doing so well going vertically. Took them down and made a "bed" of newspaper for them.

Good luck!
Jenny

Oh, I just love compost veggies. The very best watermelon I ever had was a compost volunteer -- put out 6 medium round melons that were the sweetest ever. I also had a new variety of tomato one year--sort of a round meat paste (I'm sure out of a hybrid). I should have kept the seeds, but that was before I knew how. So enjoy your free harvest.