A Cautionary Tale...

Madam Kjeldsen was right, when I first mentioned the garden she said "start small", but by then I had thrown caution to the wind and planted almost every vegetable known to man.

I particularly counted myself lucky after sampling some Spaghetti Squash and saving the seeds to try growing that as well. As usual click each photo for a better view.

Spaghetti squash is wonderful in that you bake or steam it and then it flakes out just like pasta. Any dish where you use pasta, you can substitute spaghetti squash and it tastes almost the same with fewer calories and lots of nutrients. That said I planted every seed I harvested from the tasty meal and was more than happy when they began to rise from the soil. Visions of wonderful cooking sessions danced in my head and it would not be long now...

Just in terms of an update: The garden is progressing nicely, I pick about two tomatoes daily for salads or sandwiches and Daddy is on the defensive in our competition because I have collected "style points" by planting such a diverse crop. But what has pushed me ahead is that I am already harvesting. Eating is 9 /10ths of winning!

But, dear reader I am on the verge of an ecological nightmare! I started doing a little reading on the Spaghetti Squash and found out it is a monster crop, and I have planted tons of the the seeds I saved!

One man started out with this, which seems harmless enough...

and ended up with this!

One woman even went as far as building a cage for the monster and still could not keep it contained! Another man said he had to daily check his corn to make sure the vines had not attached themselves to his corn stalks. Notice how the vines have grown over the chicken wire and in some places have managed to grow in between the spaces.

And, this growth was from about 10 seeds... I planted at least 30!

My one hope is a suggestion made by another gardener to build a climbing cage so that the vines will go up and not out.


Funny, but I see another visit to the gardening store in my future for chicken wire to build a barrier and a lot of those climbing cages.


And so I end this cautionary tale by repeating Madam Kjeldsen's warning to "start small".