A Butternut Squash germinating its own seeds!!

[lossy]

Hi Folks,

This is my first post here, I have been lurking here for a little while but I had to tell a little story.

But, first of all, my wife and I have started to grow our own vegetables this season. We know very little about gardening. We tried last year but it was an utter disaster and very dis-heartening. Nothing grew with the exception of a small few carrots and onions but were very quickly obliterated by predators i.e. slugs etc.
Anyway, this year we decided to try again and planted lots of seeds in trays and low and behold everything grew so we took the bold step of buying a polytunnel and plant everything in tubs or pots. The polytunnel occupies most of our back garden and everything is doing great so far: Carrots, Onions, Spring onions, Kale, Brocolli, Strawberries, Lettuce, Tomotoes, Raddish, Cabbage, Spinach, Sweet Pepper, Celery.... pheeewww
We cheated a little bit and bought the strawberries, Sweet Pepper, tomatoes and Celery as small plants.

Anyway back to my little story: My wife was making soup from Butternut Squash the other day and when she was cleaning out the seeds she noticed the they each had a 1" stem and a small root. Is this a common thing to happen to fruit or vegetables. Both of us have never seen this before and were totally amazed. We kept a few and popped them into a seeding tray. Hoping for the best but have no idea if they will do well or not.

Well thats enough rambling for now and hope I havnt bored everyone to tears with my long post.

Lossy

[Lesley Jay]

Hi Lossy and welcome to our forum!!

Wow, your veggie garden (or should I say tunnel) sounds absolutely fantastic! Good luck!

Seeds do germinate sometimes inside fruits and any vegetable that has seeds inside is technically a fruit. Tomatoes, squash, apples and peppers are ones where you might find germinated seeds inside and sometimes you find what looks likes tiny peppers growing inside the fruit.

Have a look at this image of a spaghetti squash that has sprouted:-

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2182/...07bebe197e.jpg

With thanks to http://asonomagarden.wordpress.com/

[lossy]

Thanks Lesley Jay.

Yup that image looks exactly like what we found.