Good things can come from bad things that happen and this is one of those stories. As I mentioned in a previous post a bush fire in January last year burnt out half of our property and came very close to burning down our temporary dwelling.
Thankfully the rural fire brigade saved the day and when the remaining piles of embers had cooled we had the land cleaned up by a very skilled plant operator using his back-hoe. All of the half burnt timber that was left after the fire was pushed in to three very large piles.
In April when the fire season was over and before any wildlife had a chance to make homes in these piles the rural fire brigade came and set them alight. A few hours later they were reduced to small piles of ash and charcoal.
As the months went by the ash and charcoal settled in to the earth that was pushed up with the half burnt timber and some plants began to grow. When the rains came and knowing that pumpkins love potash and grow well where there’s been a fire we walked down to one of the ash piles and tossed pumpkin seeds that we had saved from the previous year’s harvest over the now fertile soil.
It wasn’t long before there were pumpkin vines spreading all over the large diameter of the remains of the fire pile. They grew profusely without any help from us; we never watered them and just let nature take its course. We don’t have a very good rainfall here but Mother Nature presented us with a wonderful harvest. From just a few seeds we ended up with a store of sixty beautiful organic and delicious pumpkins.
We had early frost this year which burnt some of the vines so quite a few pumpkins were lost and when we had the property slashed the tractor driver mowed over a few. It never ceases to amaze me how so many plants can grow from just one seed. Isn’t Mother Nature marvelous? From scattering a few seeds we now have plenty of pumpkins to share around and provide us with more seeds for the next season.
Next time I will talk about the health benefits of this wonderful vegetable and its uses in herbalism.
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