Volunteer pumpkin vine takes over yard

Glenda Barnes has a great pumpkin plant taking over her yard.

Barnes, who lives at 4458 Yank Road near Black Creek, has watched the last six weeks as a foot-tall mystery stem turned into a sprawling, crawling vine that is hooking on everything it can grab onto.

“I grew up on a farm,” Barnes said. “Daddy had cucumbers, watermelons and never had a vine like this.”

When she discovered the plant, she was going to pull it up, but a friend encouraged her to let it grow and see what it could be.

The vine took hold near a rocky area where Barnes occasionally sits and enjoys her other plants.

“Now I can’t even use it because it has taken over there,” Barnes said.

The vine has sprouted shoots in every direction.

On the end of every shoot, curly tendrils have attached to anything in its path.

“It just continues to grab onto anything it can grab onto,” said daughter Betty Greene, who lives next door.

Barnes’ decorative deer and ornamental flamingo have been swallowed by the plant.

Barnes and Greene said the plant really took off after a recent rainy period.

“When we got rain, it just threw its arms out,” Greene said. “If you stand here long enough, it is going to grab a hold of your foot. It has a will of its own.”

The plant is covered with yellow flowers that are pollinated by bees and butterflies. Several small pumpkins have formed on each runner.

Tommy Batts, commercial horticulture agent with the Wilson County office of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, went to see the plant on Tuesday.

“It is quite large. I think what it has found is … some sort of nutrient somewhere, and between the water and the nutrients, it has really taken it on and beefed up,” Batts said. “Basically, what I found was that it is a pumpkin plant where she had previously tossed a pumpkin out last year or the year before, or it could have come from a bird, but it is a pumpkin plant.”

Batts, whose parents grow pumpkins, said it’s hard to identify the type because many pumpkins are hybrids.

“So if you save a seed out of a pumpkin that you get, more than likely it is not going to come back the very same the next year,” he said. “The fruit is going to be a little different.”

Batts said that by nature, pumpkin plants are vines.

“Some are bush type, but more are vines,” Batts said. “By vining, it is just trying to take over as much area as it can to intercept as much sunlight it can get. You want to built a factory, and you want that factory as large as you can so you can build fruit as best as you can.”

A factory it is.

The plant is currently stretching across Barnes’ driveway.

“It’s way over there, over here, it’s everywhere, and it keeps right on running,” Barnes said.

Barnes figures she will leave the plant alone until it has run its course.

For now, she will be cutting the tiny pumpkins off to give her grandchildren when she visits family.

“Look right here. There’s three,” Barnes said. “They are just all over the place.”

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