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West Amwell, NJ

I posted some pics of what I think was a round marrow. I don't grow pumpkins in my garden, but I did have a pumpkin out for halloween in the front yard. The pumpkin did rot and I threw it away. Now, the previous year, I did grow a small, round, cullinary marrow up at my place in NY. Picture of one of those marrows
http://home.comcast.net/~sunflower_info/Marrows_files/small_marrows.JPG

picture of round marrow on seed package:
http://www.eseeds.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/eSeeds/packet.d2w/report?merchant_rn=53578&product_rn=383030

When I grew these round marrows in NY, I grew them along side of some of the large varities of marrows. I brought home the round marrows to eat, but I didn't eat them all. Some of them I may have tossed into the garden.
This year, self-sown seedlings started to pop up in the back of the garden. The leaves are pretty much identical to marrow leaves (very zucchini like) In fact, I have a marrow growing right next to them that I planted and I couldn't tell the leaves apart. The plant started putting on round shaped, yellow or yellow-green fruit. Now the globe marrows, if I remember correctly, put on more pale green fruit when they came out. The first fruit was just under 10 pounds and was a dark solid green color. I left it on hte vine for a long time, and it stayed dark green with no orange. It started to ripen an get dark green and orange; so I cut it off and then sliced it open. Inside flesh was pretty white and firm, and looked not much different than any of the marrows I slice open.
The plant put on a second one, and this one also ended up being around 20-25 pounds and stayed dark green for a while. I still haven't cut this one open yet.
What does everyone think? What is a good way to tell if you have a pumpkin? Do smaller pumpkin varieties have leaves very similar to a zucchini? Maybe a squirrel burried a pumpkin seed in my yard.

7/19/2006 12:52:25 PM

Menomonie, WI ([email protected])

I field pumpkin starts green and finishes orange. Autumn Gold is the only pepo field pumpkin I know of that goes yellow to orange. Only way to tell is let it mature and see what color it turns and what the flesh looks like.

7/19/2006 1:07:30 PM

West Amwell, NJ

I let them stay on the vine for quite a while, and they are still dark green. I picked one, and it started turning green/orange color. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. If you leave them out long enough and the weather is right, they'll over mature and turn all orange. I've been able to keep marrows for about 7 months, but the flesh is entirely orange. I may try to cross a regular shaped marrow with the round ones. If I can secure a cross then it's a marrow. If it's a pumpkin, I shouldn't be able to cross the two, I believe.

7/19/2006 10:26:03 PM

ENGLAND

I guess the round Marrows were pollinated by males from the large marrows, you had a cross in the resulting Seeds that grew as volunteers this year. Traits from both types may be more expressive due to this cross and there could also be some throwback to genetics going back several generations in each variety.

7/20/2006 6:34:52 AM