Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 14, 2020 14:13:20 GMT -6
'Unidentified Rolling Object'
I found an orange colored pumpkin, weighing about ten pounds, lying along the side of the road this week. It looked a lot like a regular Halloween, Jack O'Lantern type pumpkin, sort of like a Connecticut Field Pumpkin, bright orange, solidly built, with a very sturdy stem attached. I suppose it fell off a truck? It was busted, but it was full of seeds, so I picked it up and took it home to harvest the contents.
Once I got it home, I was surprised by what I saw inside. It had a fairly thin wall, about an inch or so thick, which quickly became a tangled mess of deep orange, Spaghetti Squash-type flesh that completely encompassed the large seeds. The strands inside were tender and very fleshy (not stringy, or slimly, or thin, like regular pumpkins have). Actually, the insides were fleshier than a Spaghetti Squash. It looked really good to eat, but I didn't try any of it myself to confirm that.
I also didn't get a photo of the insides right away, I thought I'd just get a photo later, after I had washed up from gleaning and laying out the seeds I had found, but it started pouring down rain outside where I had placed the remains by then, and very soon afterward, it started snowing like crazy. So, I had to wait until today to get a photo. The pictures I got are not the best, as the pumpkin's guts had begun shriveling up by then, but hopefully, they're better than nothing.
A close-up of the very fleshy innards. It actually looks more supple and fleshy than a Spaghetti Squash inside, but not quite as densely packed. A little selective seed saving could probably fix that within a few generations though. 
Most of the stuffings were missing by the time I took these photos. I had to remove them to get the seeds out. The geese kind of had a field day with the loose flesh, plus, two days of laying out in our pasture until the weather returned to normal kind of took a toll on the quality of what was left.
This type of pumpkin has a very sturdy stem and appears to keep well too, being how it's mid-December, and it was showing no signs of decay. Even though it was busted wide open and has been laying outdoors for a few days, the flesh is still quite crisp.
There is nothing in this photo for a size reference but this pumpkin weighed about 10 pounds. From the looks of the heavy scaring, I'd say this variety heals well too. Those sound like very good traits for a market pumpkin. If anyone knows what variety this might be, that would make a very interesting comment and might very well become the beginnings of a crossed squash forum. Squash and pumpkins are so easy to cross pollinate that it makes them fun to experiment with. A Jack O'Lantern type pumpkin with plump seeds for baking, and a supple, spaghetti type flesh for making interesting side dishes would be a good selling point. It always seems such a waste to just carve a pumpkin and then throw away the contents. Possessing a pumpkin with the potential of becoming good table fare would make that task much more enjoyable.
My wife wanted to salt and bake these seeds, because they were so large, and plump, but I wanted to try to grow this out first, before destroying any unique genetics ... Maybe next year?
