If your idea of possibly getting a head start with saving volunteers over known planted varieties, the odds are likely against getting non mongrelized beauties. Squash volunteer more than other cucurbits. Zucchini types will have some white speckles in the leaves and butternuts will not.

Anyway, we might remember and gush over that great volunteer, but for me they are too often a disappointment....Oh, I had a great volunteer watermelon in 2007....my first RVER good one.

"Squash volunteer more than other cucurbits. Zucchini types will have some white speckles in the leaves and butternuts will not."

Thanks Wayne! just the information I was hoping for. So if I see white speckles on the leaves it gets composted....I might also have more than one type of volunteer, too early to tell.

This year I will be yanking out tomato volunteers for sure (hey, I already have). With the cucurbits I have allowed two of them to stay in the past, and both have been good ones. One was a melon that gave perfectly nice melons (cantaloupes), the other one a green sunburst squash that was very nice and also could have fed the whole neighborhood. I feel reluctant to take them out since they are placed so well between the corn, and well, they look so healthy and full of life.

I always have pumpkin volunteers in my corn patch. I just let them grow. The pumpkins probably aren't good for eating - never tried - but they help to keep the varmints out, and they make excellent jack o'lanterns for the neighborhood kids.

I've wracked my brain all night and can't come up with any differences in seedlings, but once they get a bit bigger maybe you can tell? Aren't most all cukes, and all butternuts, melons and pumpkins, vines? While zukes and crooknecks bushes? So maybe if it doesn't vine soon, it's C. pepo?

I've always thought that squash vines look a lot thicker than cukes, with bigger leaves. Did that hold true with the vars. you grew? Maybe that could help you determine once they get a bit bigger. Is there room to plant a few cuke seeds nearby for direct comparison? Maybe that would help you tell what it is, too, or atleast what it's not.

I do know if they get to the female flower stage, you'll see baby whatever-it-is on the female flowers, between the stem and the bloom. They'll look just like whatever they are ~ tiny little butternuts if that's what the vine is, tiny little cukes if that's what it is, etc. But by that time, you may want to just leave it, no matter what it is.

Can you plant what you were going to plant anyway, and just feed them extra? Like intensive cropping. Or is there just not enough room?

knittlin, I think they are squash rather than cukes. Cukes look the same but a little smaller, leaves a bit more delicate? I did sow some cuke seeds so i will have the chance to compare soon (still not germinated). There are two likely possibilities, acorn and butternut squash. The acorn could be mongrelized (hybrid) due to other C. pepo we grew around it. I thought about this a little more last night and figured that we were eating cukes and summer squash too tender for the seeds to have been viable. The exception was a cuke we allowed to get really ripe but we saved all the seeds from it. We also did this with a zucchini, and saved all the seeds. Winter squashes are the ones that improve by 'curing' and the seeds are viable when one opens the squash to eat it, right? So they make it into the compost pile and it seems I did not have enough heat going to destroy the seeds. I have improved my composting 'technology' recently, and I am getting more heat now.

Looking at the volunteer seedlings again this morning I noticed that there is only one that is growing too close to a tiny corn stalk so the roots of both would be compromised if I let it grow. I think I will only take that one out, the other ones might as well stay, as you say and barbe also mentions on the post above yours, squashes are such 'naturals' on a corn patch that they should stay, and there is not an excessive number of them. Everything here is grown intensively for sure, so why not? I will keep an eye for the female flowers and I know what you mean, you can see the color and shape of the fruit to come right under the petals and then decide. If it looks like a butternut I'll be a happy camper (yummy)

I wanted to give an update on what happened since it might be informative for new gardeners, however, the last thread I intended to bump did not bump. Let's see...

So I only had two possibilities, that was either pure butternut, pure acorn, mongrelized acorn with black beauty zucchini, or mongrelized acorn with yellow straight neck squash. Mongrelized black beauty and yellow straight neck is eliminated as a possibility since no viable seeds from either yellow or green zuchs ever made it made it to the compost pile, and there was no other squash growing on that location last season.

I do see what you mean knittlin about vining and non vining. It seems that I have some unhybridized acorn squash, it does vine. I also have a greenish elongated and ridged like an acorn squash "thing", probably a mongrel between acorn and black beauty zuch. I also have a similar thing but in yellowish (very light green really) and that could be a hybrid between the yellow squash and the acorn (both C pepo). We cut some young mongrels (both types) and I sauteed them with some olive oil and chimichurri sauce, they were pretty tasty. They were about 4-5 inches long. Of course, just about anything that you sautee young in anything will be tasty. I will try to report on what happens when these grow a little more. If they get tough or develop harsh flavor or texture i will just eat them young or harvest the flowers (squash blossom quesadillas).