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Squash or Gourd?

satellitehead
16 years ago

Hi there,

I have one for you - my best guess is 'cucurbita pepo', but not sure.

Basically, I had this guy pop up about 4-5 weeks ago. Since then, it has run rampant. In fact, in the first pic below, you can see my compost bin, which is four 4'x4' shipping crates locked together - this will give you an idea of length of the runners. It tried to grow around the side of my house and into the garage. We let it go with the novel idea that we might have some good eats later this year.

But ... this thing is getting out of hand - there are 8-10 runners, some as long as 25-30', it's climbing up into my trees, trying to grow around the house and into my garage, it's taking over everything!! It acts like kudzu....What the heck IS this?

We thought it was squash when the small, lightbulb shaped fruit started to appear. In 2-3 weeks, they have quintupled in size, and even now, a week later, they are large enough to fit into my adult palm, but still uniquely lightbulb shaped. All of them are yellow with with stripes, some have a splash of green where the blossom was - blossom is a typical yellow 5-leaf squash-style blossom that sticks with the fruit for quite a while.

Can anyone help me ID? I want to know whether I should trim it back or cut it back - it is taking over my tomatoes, my fothergilla and false blue indigo - if it's not edible, i'm going to cut it back, toss the fruit and compost the vine.

If nothing else, are the blossoms edible and as tasty as typical squash blossoms?

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