Don't Save Those Hybrid Seeds

The fruit of hybrid pumpkin seeds

The garden books always warn you that the seeds of a hybrid vegetable won't produce true to the hybrid parent.  That was proved to me this year with the "pumpkins" pictured here.

Last fall a neighbor tossed a load of round orange pumpkins over the fence for the cattle to eat.  The cows loved them and this spring the pasture had a nice patch of pumpkin vines.

The cattle didn't eat of even trample the vines and when we went to mow the field this month we found they had produced these strange oblong, soft skinned fruits that look nothing like the traditional Halloween style pumpkins from last fall.  I've been chopping them into piece with a shovel and feeding them to the chickens. They are soft like a big zucchini and have a center cavity with large pumpkin like seeds. The chickens think they are great!