German police rushed to the scene when a worried resident found what he thought was a Second World War bomb in his garden, only to find a particularly large courgette.
Police were summoned to the scene in Bretten, near the south-western city of Karlsruhe, by a worried 81-year-old man.
They determined "the object, which really did look very like a bomb", was actually a 41cm courgette.
The offending vegetable, which was dark, weighed about 5kg.
Police believe someone threw it over a hedge into the garden.