We had a couple of volunteers pop up in my newly created mountain. My wife and I weren’t sure what the first one was but we thought we would just let it mature and see what it developed. We thought it was a type of squash at first, so when the fruit started to develop I did a little research and found we had cantaloupes. The other plant was a little more obvious since we have had tomatoes crop up in various locations of the garden.
I tried to contain the cantaloupe to the mountain and was mostly successful, but the tomato was a different story. I am not a huge fan of tomatoes and wasn’t excited about the location of this one. My wife was going to transplant it to a different location, but between caring for our 4 year old and preparing for our upcoming vacation, time just wasn’t going to allow. I put up a cage with hopes that it would stay put. Ha! Tomatoes don’t stay put. Especially some cherry varieties.
When we got back from vacation we discovered that it had taken over the railroad. I had to build a temporary trellis bridge and prop up other portions to allow train running.
The cantaloupe were quite ripe and we harvested around half a dozen decent size ones. They turned out to be quite tasty. We are still not quite sure where they came from. We have never grown cantaloupe before. Maybe the seeds were in the fill dirt I had delivered, although it was suppose to be screened and “mostly” sterile. Or maybe birds, which we have a lot of. Oh the joys of garden railroading. Enjoy.