Wednesday, June 22,2004 - my pumpkin taking over the sugar snaps, it survived last night's hail pretty well.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
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.
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
