Volunteer plants

I've heard about volunteer plants but never had any of my own. Unless you count all of the trees and plants I've found on my property. But I just always assumed that since they're native to this part of the country that they were here before we were.

This year, however, I have my very own volunteer plants. The first one is this giant pumpkin.

What started out as an innocent little, what is that? It has now grown to this enormous, I'm taking over the whole garden, pumpkin plant. Last month, in June, we started getting these cute little pumpkins. And I thought, oh look they'll get huge. Nope!! I was wrong.

To make a very long story short, what happened was...last year this plot of dirt was occupied by my chickens. This year I tilled it in preparation of planting corn and sunflowers. Well that never happened so I thought no big deal I'll just let the grass grow up. Once again, that didn't happen. Because lo and behold this adorable little plant started growing. Fast forward to now...now I have a pie pumpkin plant taking over my entire garden area. I've already harvested 11 little pumpkins, and fed 2 of them to my chickens. I know I'll end up with so many more and have no idea what I'm going to do with all of them. Maybe I'll have a homeschool pumpkin patch, or maybe I'll make a bunch of puree and sell it. Or maybe....who knows but I do know that we will NOT be planting any more pumpkins any time in the future.