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Photo by Bob Pennell Charity DeKorte, 14, checks out a large squash that her grandmother, Willie DeKorte, found growing in a hedge in her Central Point back yard. It's odd produce season again Serpentine cukes and duck-shaped spuds crop up in private gardens By JONEL ALECCIA It's harvest time in the Rogue Valley, which means most backyard gardeners are hauling in tidy crops of perfectly normal vegetables. Round tomatoes. Straight zucchini. Oblong potatoes. But every once in a while, Mother Nature throws local growers a curve, literally. Just ask Lorna Eary, a Grange Co-Op worker who discovered a strange sight in her parents' veggie patch this summer. "We had a cucumber that literally looked like it was coiled into a snake," says Eary. "It was about 1 inches in diameter and coiled around and it had a little head on it." Eary's parents, Lorin and Sharon Bosch of Eagle Point, were perplexed by the curly cuke, but not enough to worry about it. "We ate it," says Eary. "We didn't want to waste it." Across the Rogue Valley, gardeners have harvested some other odd produce as well. In Central Point, Willie DeKorte found a volunteer vine had left a large, strange squash hanging smack in the middle of a backyard hedge. "I'm sure it's just a common thing, but look at it," says DeKorte. "It's huge!" Sure enough, she points to an orange orb the size of two basketballs, bobbing from a vine like an oversize Christmas ornament. Granddaughter Charity DeKorte, 14, planted some seeds last spring, but no one expected a squash like this. It's like a pumpkin-squash hybrid, DeKorte explains. "It's not a real pumpkin, when they're young they're green and this was yellow." She plans to donate the squash and a few others just like for a harvest display downtown. Farther south, Davey Lee Boesch of Medford dug around in his potato patch and came up with a spud that looks just like a duck. Not like Donald, or even Daffy, but just like an ordinary rubber duckie that floats in the bathtub. And a customer at the Grange Co-Op in Medford brought in an eggplant with an extra appendage. Mike McGrath, the garden store operator, couldn't characterize the vegetable as any particular shape. It just looked odd. "Sometimes people will bring in things that look cute," he says. "That's when you get your twin zucchini, or your forked carrots." Such sights don't simply appear, says George Tiger, an agent with the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Service. There's usually a botanical explanation for crooked carrots and perverse potatoes, and it usually has something to do with erratic watering. "A plant will start growing and then it will be allowed to get on the dry side," Tiger explains. "And then they'll water it again and it restarts, so it grows a little knob or another little piece of tuber." The solution, of course, it to make sure plants are evenly watered throughout the growing season. With above-ground vegetables and fruits, odd shapes are generally caused by an extra blossom that burgeons on the side of another fruit, Tiger says. "Either way, you get some real strange things under those conditions," he says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA