Pumpkin weigh in stats as of 10/8/05

Dave - The "King" Pumpkin grower of Boulder ( so far ) - 125 #

Kenny, Cheryl, Jack in Ft Collins - 93#

Cara - The "Queen" - 79 # (and slowly turning to mush since the mold set in) and 35# (this is my pumpkin that grew from the top of the trellis in the sling

Anybody else have any stats to publish?


For the record, we had our first frost on 10/6/05

News of another pumpkin grown in Ft Collins

I gave some seeds to a friend in Ft Collins who later gave her plants to a friend. Here's news of their pumpkin that grew outside of our neighborhood........................

We are Kenny, Cheryl and Jack, in Fort Collins. We have been following your blog and growing our own pumkin with a plant given to us by our friend Delia. We were so happy with our pumpkin that we took it to a benefit and sold chances to guess its weight to raise money for the Larimer Center for Mental Health. We haven't weighed it yet, but when we do, we will let you know. We're looking for a scale that's big enough!

Thanks so much, growing this pumpkin has been so much fun, and showing it off even more fun!

63" and 79# as of 10/2/05

I picked my pumpkin this evening. It was a bittersweet event.

We left for the weekend to see the fall colors in Fraser, Colorado, only to return and find that the squirrel had chewed about an 8" diameter circle and the pumpkin was starting to mold. My application of cayenne pepper slowed him down on the other spots but he was clever enough to start chewing in a new spot. He must've sensed that I wasn't here.

I doubt that I'll have much to show by Halloween. So we did one last measurement and Steve volunteered to hold it while on the scale which came in at 79# which isn't too shabby for not getting pollinated till August.

I'm hoping I can keep the squirrel away from my pumpkin in the hammock long enough to actually have something to show for Halloween.

61" as pf 9/19/05

The squirrel has been taking bites out of my pumpkin! grrrrrrrr
I sprinkled cayenne powder on the spot where he's been eating, hopefully that will discourage him from any more snacking.

My hanging pumpkin is still pretty round and still hanging. I've noticed that the part that is not hidden by the lycra is starting to turn orange.

58.5" as of 9/13/05

I think my pumpkin is as large as it's going to get. It's been 58.5 " for 2 days in a row and today has really cooled off, it's cloudy and in the 60s.

My other pumpkin that is growing off the ground is getting some heft to it and it. Maybe it's good that the growing season is ending cause I don't think the trellis could handle much more weight, it's already starting to sway

.

54" as of 9/7/05 - and the pumpkin sling

My pumpkin has slowed down it's growth the last few days to about 1"/day. I've also noticed that it's starting to change color from yellow to more orange. I also discovered another pumpkin hanging from the top of my bean trellis so I had to rig up a kind of pumpkin sling to keep it from falling off the stem. Unfortunately I did not document the pollination date for it so Martha may have me beat for that category.

My plan was to keep the vines on the ground but I was not as dilligent as I should've been trying to keep the vines off the trellis so this one snuck by me.

The vines have pretty much taken over 3 of my raised beds so I wanted to document the growth so I will remember to plant these beauties in a different location next year. I will admit to being sucked into the giant pumpkin mania and even pulled up my bush beans to make more room for my pumpkin. That is a pretty severe sacrifice on my part since I look forward to string beans and fresh tomatoes every summer. Dave has accused me of getting addicted to the mania of these vegetables.

Dave also thinks that my pumpkin may come in at 50# which is pretty reasonable for a first year attempt.

The competition - as of 9/4/05

Here's the competition we're up against - Neighbor Dave's pumpkin at 71". As you can see he's a tough competitor.........

46" as of 9/2/05

It's still growing despite the nights dropping below 50 degress.

39" as of 8/30/05

25" as of Wednesday 8/24/05

I'm still on track for my 2" growth per day.........

Top 10 list for growing a pumpkin - and maybe a big one too

1. Plant your seeds in a sunny location
2. Don't eat your seeds, plant them
3. Water your plants daily
4. Fertilize regularly
5. Don't trim your vines, you need long vines to get flowers
   
6. Deport your squirrels
7. Don't go on vacation
8. Don't plant your pumpkin seeds with other squashes (they cross pollinate)
   
9. Be patient, and have fun
   
10. and most of all..........Try again in 2006

I have a pumpkin - where's the competition?

Here's my pumpkin. It was pollinated on 8/11 so I decided I'm going for the latest pollination date category in the competition. It's measuring 17" in circumference after 9 days, almost 2"/day. If it keeps up and we don't get an early frost it could grow another 52" by Sept 15.

I've been peeking over a few neighbors fences and just on my street alone I know of 2 pumpkins that are at least 3x bigger than mine. I also heard from neighbor Mark that he's having problems with cross pollination and his pumpkins are looking more like spaghetti squashes and falling off the vine. The leaves on his plant don't look like pumpkin leaves but he swears they are the seeds I gave him. Is anybody else having this problem?

There's got to be somebody else in the neighborhood that can give neighbor Dave a little competition. His pump is over 68" in circumference now but he says it is slowing down. I keep telling him he better watch out, mine could catch up to his since the weather is cooling off and is more conducive to growing than back in July when it was so hot and his was starting.

Other web sites concerning Giant Pumpkins

In response to Lesley's request.......

Here are a few websites with information on growing giant pumpkins:

http://bigpumpkins.com/Diary/Default.asp
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/growing.htm
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1646.html
http://www.giantpumpkins.com/

Boulder, we have a bud!!! and it's a female too

I've been peeking under leaves, only to see male blossoms for the past 4 weeks. What a disappointment too. I thought I saw 1 or 2 female blossoms but nothing was really happening with them. Then tonight, I found my first real female blossom and it actually looks like it might flower soon.

Here's hoping for some happy bees that know their pollination business when the flower opens.

I might actually be in the competition yet!


PS Neighbor Dave says there are always more male flowers than female ones.

Unpumpkins so far

Unfortunately while I was traveling around France looking at their gardens, my sprinkler system was not performing as expected. I had carefully programmed my sprinkler so it would water my garden 3 times a week while we gone. I had aligned the sprinkler so it would get all the areas of my garden especially my competition pumpkins, which were doing pretty well when we left 6/25.

But, what I didn't calculate for, was our teenage son moving the sprinkler so he could mow the lawn while we were gone, and then carefully putting it back in place. The overlooked factor was which direction the sprinkler should be facing. In the law of averages, you have a 50/50 chance of getting something right or wrong. My garden fell into the 50% chance of getting it wrong. The sprinkler was replaced so it watered the grass and not the garden for at least 2 weeks while we were gone. So I came home to find a pretty well xeriscaped garden 3 weeks later.

Since then I've been diligently watering it and it seems to have made a pretty good recovery. The only problem is, I have wonderful vines and lots of male flowers but very few, if any, female blossoms and no pumpkins. I have one female blossom I'm still hoping will eventually open to be pollinated. One can always hope. Hey, I've got 3 months till Halloween, there's always hope. In the meantime, I have giant pumpkin vines that are attempting to take over my garden, see the attached picture.

The pumpkin plant that had been planted in the front yard dried up at the base and withered away to nothing. So that plant's out of the running despite neighbor Dave's attentions.

But, speaking of neighbor Dave, his pumpkin is doing fabulously, 65" in circumference the last time he measured it. So watch out! he's the biggest competition so far. See the attached picture of his pumpkin from this past week.

Send me your pictures and be sure to post comments so we can hear how everyone else is doing with their pumpkins. Also stay tuned to this blog and the MANA website for future details of when and where the final pumpkin festivities will be held.

Pumpkins in France

I've been remiss in posting news to this blog because we have been off traveling in France for 3 weeks in June and July. While we were traveling I left my garden and pumpkins mostly unattended w/ the sprinkler programmed to water it while I was gone. More on that in another posting....

But let's talk about gardening in France here.

One of our adventures was to visit the Chenonceau chateau in the Loire River valley. Besides the chateau being gorgeous, they had a huge vegetable garden demonstration, similar I'm sure to when people occupied the chateau in the 16th century. I think I spent as much time in the vegetable garden as I did exploring the chateau.

Their growing season has to be much longer than ours in Boulder and their vegetables and plants seemed to be at least 4-5 weeks ahead of ours. Plus, I'm sure they get much more rain than we do. Many of the trees I saw around there were ones I remember seeing in Louisville, KY, magnolia trees for example.

There were glass cloches (like our 'walls of water') sitting around that had been used earlier in the season for frost protection and beautiful bamboo trellises, ornamental flower gardens, shrub mazes, and, of course giant pumpkins growing. In many of the rooms of the chateau they had beautiful flower arrangements which I'm sure were composed of flowers that had come from the surrounding gardens.

In the kitchen there was a centerpiece on the table that was made from at least a dozen miniature tomato plants with baby red tomatoes on them. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture to share.

So to tempt my fellow gardeners who are reading this blog, here are the pictures from that fabulous visit to Chenonceau.

Wednesday, June 22,2004 - my pumpkin taking over the sugar snaps, it survived last night's hail pretty well.

Wednesday, June 22,2004 - the Master Pumpkin grower's plant. Use the comment button to ask him for hints and tips 

my pumpkin 

The competition 

Dave the grower and his pumps 

My notes Friday, June 10, 2005

Please post your comments to this blog as the mood strikes. Just click on the word "Comments" next to the pencil icon at the end of each posting and write away. We can use the blog to keep track of how everyone is doing and get the competitive spirit started.

I have 2 plants growing already but I don't know how they fared in all the rain we had today. One of them looks more like a bush pumpkin than a vine pumpkin, but Dave said not to pull it up so I'm not. The other one is an anemic looking 1' long vine.

Dave's sharecropping a plant in my yard and his plant looks pretty good, but then he's been feeding it some secret ingredients so it's expected to be doing better. I'm trying to go the organic route, if I don't get sucked over to the dark side of chemicals when Dave's plant starts to outgrow my 2 plants.

I started them indoors and put them outside under walls of water on May 5, but took the walls of water off 2 weeks later when it started to warm up. Since then it's been pretty cool and rained a lot. Here's hoping for warmer weather.

The "rules" of the competition

Seeds: You can use the seeds I passed out or you can use any pumpkin seeds you want.

Now that I have the seeds what do I do?: Grow your pumpkins, organically, hydroponically, chemically, essentially, anyway you want. Here are a a couple URLs that you can reference for information:http://bigpumpkins.com/Diary/Default.asp, http://www.ggpga.com/

What are the categories that will be judged? Largest, smallest, ugliest, roundest, best looking, organic, chemical, make your own category, (none of these categories are absolutes)

When is the competition? The neighborhood will be having a Halloween festivity and the judging will be part of the events. The date, time, and place tbd.

Who's doing the judging? Probably me and anyone else I can enlist.

What do I get if I win? There will be prizes and ribbons, and you also get the gratification of growing your own pumpkin and maybe eating it too.

How it all got started

You've been reading about the Giant Pumpkin Contest in the MANA news, and you've also been reading about it on the Mana distribution list on the web, but I bet you've been wondering how this whole thing got started. Well, here it is......

About a year ago my mother gave me some women's magazine that she had finished reading. In one of them was an article about a woman that had more acreage than she knew what to do with so she started sharing it w/her neighbors. Her neighbors started growing pumpkins and having a contest. I think this has been going on for several years. I don't remember where, or any more details than this. This sounded like a pretty fun thing to do so I filed it away in my brain to try and remember it in the future.

Then, the first year my neighbor Dave moved in I noticed a pretty large pumpkin on his front porch around Halloween. I hadn't met him but I thought it pretty neat that he had such a large pumpkin. The seasons passed and I eventually met Dave and his wife. We shared gardening conversations and last summer when Dave was going on vacation he asked me to water his pumpkins. (I didn't know that he had been growing giant pumpkins) .

It was a lot of fun going over every evening and watering and seeing how much the pumpkins had grown from the previous 24 hours. Dave succeeded in growing a 130lb + pumpkin. In fact he had 5 large pumpkins as summer ended.

If I could figure out how to post pictures, I'd post one of his pumpkins.

Anyway, Dave got me hooked, and I decided to enlist my fellow neighbors to give him a little competition this summer in the growing of Giant Pumpkins. He's graciously provided the seeds from his pumpkins from last summer. I've passed out seeds to 20 friends and neighbors so we have the makings of a pretty spirited competition.

Here's how it started...............