Surprise!

[rainbowgardener]

So last fall I planted a little serviceberry tree in our front lawn, mulched with compost. This spring I noticed there was some volunteer cucurbit creeping out across the lawn from it. (We get more compost volunteers here, because the compost doesn't freeze very much.) It had smaller, pointier leaves than squashes. So we left it and mowed around it , which meant by now it was growing in a bed of tall grass.

Today the partner asked me if she needed to keep mowing around it. I said it doesn't seem like it is doing very much, so no. She dug through the grass a bit first and discovered what appears to be a full sized (a little bigger than store bought) ripe cantaloupe! And perfect on the outside, probably protected by the grass.

Haven't opened it yet. Will let you know what we find.

[applestar]

Yay! Cantaloupe grown in your front lawn sounds like a wonderful surprise!

...imagine if she had mowed right through!

[JONA]

That was a great surprise!
We are just recovering from a heat wave that reduced our lawns to a brown crisp.

[applestar]

I heard! Did you have watering restrictions, too? I bet the heatwave would have been great for growing melons if you had/were able to water.

[JONA]

Thankfully in our area we never came under a water restriction...but to try to help conserve, most folk refrained from watering their lawns.
Farmers were having to feed winter feed to try to keep their stock happy.
Our orchards suffered for a while but they’ve recovered well since it’s started to rain again and the fruit is swelling well.

As you say...we should have planted melons!
The local vineyards are doing well though. There’s always a silver lining somewhere!

[rainbowgardener]

We have had a very wet summer. We have had 46+ inches of rain, year to date, where our average total for the whole year is 52.

[applestar]

Yeah they DO like/need a lot of water to grow well. Supposed to be better if less water before harvesting, but that’s not always controllable. In my area, we tend to have dry summer, then wet end of summer-fall, which doesn’t do much for melons or grapes for that matter.

[rainbowgardener]

So we cut into it and it is in fact a large and perfectly ripe cantaloupe! Ate half of it today.

I probably couldn't have grown one as nice on purpose as I did by accident. I expect it benefitted not only from the wet summer, but from being hidden in the tall grass ...