HelpfulGardener.com

I grow pumpkins. And right next to the pumpkin patch I grow yellow crookneck squash.

This year I got a brand new plant that self-seeded itself. It has leaves like a pumpkin, but the fruit is like a cross between a yellow crookneck squash and a pumpkin.

The fruit is oval, about 6 to 8 inches long, yellow, with slight rivlets in the skin (like a pumpkin). It has a thin green band circling across the bottom.

Open it up, and it looks and tastes exactly like a yellow crookneck squash.

I think it would be great in the grocery store -- just like a much larger more voluminous version of yellow crookneck squash.

Is this some kind of cross or hybrid? I guess I don't know how cross-breeding veggies works, but if that's what this is, it looks like a real winner! What do you think?

It’s certainly possible. Most pumpkins are either Cucurbita pepo or Cucurbita maxima, and yellow crooknecks are Cucurbita pepo. So the same species can easily cross… and if the patches are close to each other, than the bees and other pollinators could easily have visited a male flower of one and female flower of the other.

This is the first generation — F1, and subsequent generations could express different genetic traits. The trick is to stabilize the cross over several generations, so the offsprings from seeds would always grow true.

Enjoy this year’s lucky bounty!

…If you let a couple of them fully mature like pumpkins, they might be made into crazy interesting Halloween

Sounds like a winner.

So, I've harvested three of these now. Each about 6 to 8 inches long.

They have insides just like a yellow crookneck, and soft outsides like any summer squash.

So I fried them up in a pan with onions, etc, and they were excellent.

I'm convinced I really have something here... a substitute for a yellow crookneck that is much bigger and more voluminous.

I think I'll let one grow as big as possible and see if it gets as big as an oval pumpkin!

Altogether, a lucky accident that shows how fun the unexpected can be when gardening.