10/19/08 - The 2nd & 3rd place winners from Eastlake are.........

Here's the information from Paul in Eastlake with his and his neighbor's results......

Recall late start with 8 seeds which produced 4 plants, two plants (mine)produced a couple of softball sized, third plant (pix # pump3) produced average sized but very shiny, bright color, with color up most of the stem. 13.5 lbs, 35 inch circumference, about 8 inches height. Fourth plant we will call Eastlake #4 for now, (pix pump4) had good sun exposure, was 60 inch circumference, 65.4 pounds, 17 inches tall including stem Next year, earlier start, more sun,along with squirrel, deer & fox (for #4) strategies.


Everyone's pumpkins are beautiful. I'm disappointed I didn't have a contender this year, but I'm looking forward to making pies out of my Jaradales. Hopefully the interiors aren't blue like the exteriors.

10/13/08 - The Canadian winner

Here's our winner from Canada,

Drumroll please....

The big orange one Del is sitting beside (102 lbs, 71" circumference, 13" high)

The big ugly yellow one (108 lbs, 69" circumference, 15" high)

The medium orange one his son's posed with (70 lbs, 63" circumference by 12" high)

The small guy on the porch (42 lbs, 49" circumference, 10" high)

9/27/08 - The end of the Jaradale growing season

I caught the squirrel under the netting today amongst the pumpkins, so I decided it was time to harvest the Jaradales. I didn't want to take the chance of the squirrel starting to chew on them like he did the first one. We've had consistently warm weather and no frost yet but the growing season is definitely coming to an end.

I weighed the 4 pumpkins I harvested today, and they totaled 26 pounds. These 5 pumpkins came to a total of 35 pounds. No where close to my giant pumpkin last year.

08/28/08 - East Lake - Ron and Linda's pumpkin is thriving!!!

This plant is Ron & Linda's.... 14 inches from ground to top, will have to do a curcumference measurement.

09/05/08 - The cooler weather has begun

I've been quite negligent in posting this summer. July was unbearably hot. The cooler weather has started and fall is not very far away, so I harvested the oldest pumpkin today. It weights 9.6 lbs, not nearly as exciting as the giants. I have 5 in total. This one survived several attacks by the squirrels and scabbed over to heal itself. It survived much better than the Atlantic Giants from prior years. They just started to rot as soon as the outer skin was broken.

7/13/08 - Eastlake Blossoms

First blossom on the potted pump. Potted pump outgrowing the grounded pump in this regard, however, the grounded pump was vertical, leaned over, on Friday, as of Sunday, the main stem is along the ground with growth along the ground accelerating with a new vine not seen on Friday, but the existing (pre-lean) vines are headed skyward, topping at 22.5 inches.

7/6/08 - Boulder Squirrels

I came back to Boulder after being gone 4 days only to discover that our neighborhood squirrels had decided to sample 2 of my pumpkins. I had thought about throwing netting over them before I went out of town. I figured they hadn't chewed on my pumpkins in past years until they had matured a bit more, so I was safe for a few more weeks. Hah!

I immediately found the netting and placed it on a 3rd fruit that was developing. Hopefully that will be enough to deter them for awhile.

The circumference of the larger pumpkin from stem to blossom end is 17.5". I'm going to leave it on the vine and be optimistic and hope it will scale over and keep growing.

7/3/08 - Eastlake update

The "potted" pump was going gangbusters ahead of the one in the ground, but suddenly within the last week, the one in the ground is taking off.... dims for potted are: 21" tip-to-tip, 9 inches above ground max leave height. Gets more afternoon sun. The one in the ground is on the west side of a fence so gets no direct sun until about 11 AM, but the fence heats up as early as 07:55 when the sun can get to the fence. Dims for grounded pump are 21-1/2" tip to tip, and 14-1/2 " above ground. No blossoms on either, looks like more leaves ready to unfurl. These were started several weeks after yours.... No fertilizer yet, but have added a few doses of used coffee grounds to each pump.....

7/5/08 - Canada's latest

Plants 1&2 are going strong and
fighting off the zuchinni and rubarb in the garden. plant 3 on the far
right has almost died several times, so it's encouraging to see it
starting to make a comeback.

7/2/08 - Raleigh - no pumpkins this year, but the sunflowers are doing just fine!

All,

So I am out of the giant pumpkin business this year, well check out the sunflower we have growing. I am 6'4" and when reaching straight up I reach an 8 ft ceiling. Not sure how tall the sunflower plant is but 13 ft might be a good estimate.

Steve

6/27/08 - I have my first female bloom

When I checked my plant this morning I discovered that the first female bloom had opened. I've had male blooms the last few mornings so this was a nice discovery. I hand pollinated it so hopefully it's good to go. I noticed another female blossom on the same vine. I haven't found any other potential female blooms on the other vines yet.

I continue to water every night and fertilize once a week.

6/15/08 - Boulder - doing pretty well

You can see some shredded leaves from the hail and wind but the plant seems to be doing pretty well. The days have been in the 80's the last week so that seems to have given it a growth spurt. I've been fertilizing weekly. I'm not sure if I'm following the high nitrogen feeding that Dave proposed. I need to go back and look at the numbers on the organic fertilizer I bought.

6/15/08 - How to fertilize your pumpkin by Dave

Pumpkins grow in three stages: 1. leaves, roots, stem 2. flowers 3. fruit (pumpkin). You can help in all three stages by providing the tools the pumpkin needs to grow. Pumpkins (like all plants) need three basic elements. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. By providing these at the opportune time, you can encourage your pumpkin to make the required item. A good rule of thumb is June=nitrogen, July=phosphorous and August/Sept=potassium. You can provide these any way you like. Manure is a favorite for nitrogen. Sea weed products are also quite popular. The numbers on fertilizers relate to the percentages of the three elements so 5-10-5=5% N 10% P 5% K (remember your chemistry?).

6/13/08 - News from Toronto

The spring in Toronto has been chilly, and not having a yard yet of his own, Del sent his pumpkin seedings to his mother's garden. It looks like they are doing well.

6/6/08 - Raleigh's butternut is doing better than his pumpkin

Here's the latest report I received from Steve who is trying to grow his pumpkin in Raleigh, NC:

Here are the latest pumpkin photos. Unfortunately the deer that wander our neighborhood ate one set of plants to a nub, another set lost all it's leaves. This leaves the third set which luckily was not completely demolished. We will look to cover the plant today with a plan to move it into the garden tomorrow to protect it more. Our garden isn't huge so we didn't put it there as we didn't want it taking over.

I also am including a picture of the nearby butternut squash. No deer munching here!

6/4/08 - HAIL !!! - but just a little this time

It's that time of year and I've learned from past years to be ready for hail. I have 3 new metal screens this year to add to my collection of screen door and other frames with screening on them. But did I have them up when I needed them? No, of course not. Who knows why not, but they weren't up when it started hailing this evening. It was dumping buckets of rain when the hail came and I sat there and watched it all, too lazy to get up I guess. There were severe storm warnings out too.

I guess the lesson learned is that once I hear severe storm warnings on the radio, I need to go out and put up the hail protection anyway, just as insurance. I was lucky this time, just a few shredded leaves and the hail was small.
I had a near disaster yesterday when one of the frames was blown over onto my pumpkin during the day. None of the stems or leaves were broken. I was very lucky. Guess that's my excuse for not having it up where it belonged.

I noticed a few possible buds forming on the larger plant today. Maybe in a week or two I'll know for sure. It's been in the 80s the last few days and my garden really took a leap in growth.

5/30/08 - Boulder - Growin Fine !

I was updating Paul's posting and just realized I hadn't posted anything in awhile on my Jaradale. I fed it some triple phosphate last week. I've seen quite a bit of leaf growth since the feeding, but then the warm temperatures could be helping too. I just bought some organic fertilizer from McGuckins that I will be giving it in the future too.

We had 3-4 days of rain over memorial weekend and cool temperatures. It's been in the 80's the last few days here. I'm still covering my pump at night

5/23/08 - We finally hear from Eastlake, CO

Before I left work last December, I gave Paul several seeds. Unfortunately I can't remember if I gave him seeds for the pretty orange pumps (I think I did) or the palish ones I grew last summer. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Both seeds came from pumps that were over 100#.

He lives in Eastlake which is near Denver. I hadn't heard anything from him recently so I sent him a note. I found out that his wife doesn't believe in planting anything before June 1 so he was still holding onto his seeds. I told him Memorial weekend is an ok time to plant but we still have to watch out for hail.

Here's Paul's latest report....So far, 4 of the 8 seeds germinated, and it has been only a few days.....one with a shoot almost 2 inches long !
Moved them from the wet paper towel birthing area to a pot and wet them down.. they should get a lot of wamth in the back yard...


pictures as of 5/29/08

5/22/08 - Tornadoes in Windsor, some hail in Boulder

Windsor, Co was hammered with tornadoes today and experienced very serious building damage. Windsor is about 40 miles NE from Boulder.

We had on and off light rains throughout the day and around 4 pm a fast wave of hail came through. The hail was about 1/2" in diameter. It was enough to get me excited. I was a reluct hero and grabbed an umbrella and went out and covered my pumpkin and a few other plants in case the hail got any worse. About the time I finished covering everything, the hail stopped. Hopefully I can keep up this routine throughout the summer.

I was hoping the hail wouldn't show up till later in June like in 2006, guess it wasn't to be so.

5/21/08 - Boulder Jaradales

We've been having day temperatures in the 80s F and nights in the 50s and 60s so the pumpkins are starting to show more growth. I decided to bet my load and planted All my seedlings outside. I haven't taken off the cold frame yet. I'm keeping the plants covered at night. These warm temperatures really help with growth, my other garden plants have shown lots of new foliage lately.

I looked at 2006 to check on the frost date that wiped us out, and it was the end of June, a month away. Hopefully we'll be lucky this year like last. Just in case, I have all my hail protection out in the yard ready should the need arise.

5/21/08 - The Toronto contingent

We have competition in Toronto this year. Del provided pictures of his brood and reported that they're having temperatures around 14 C (I think that's 56 F). I told him once he gets these babies planted outside, and they get established, they'll take over his yard and he'll have more time to go riding since he'll be spending less time mowing.

5/6/08 - The Raleigh competition weighs in

It looks like we will have some very strong competition coming out of Raleigh, NC this season. I thought I had a pretty strong start, but now that I see the Gerney seedlings, mine is pretty insipid. It almost makes me want to pull up my Jaradale and replant it with a giant pumpkin, NOT!

5/4/08 - The 2008 Season begins

The 2008 pumpkin growing season has begun! Neighbor Dave moved to Utah and has sadly decided NOT to grow giant pumpkins this year. I have 3 seeds from a >800# Longmont pumpkin in my seed stash tempting him for next season. Since it's no fun to grow giant pumpkins without a neighbor to compete against, I decided I'd grow edible pumpkins this year instead. I puchased some blue Jaradale seeds when I was in Texas in March. The packet describes them as good eating and can get to 10# in size.

I decided I needed more vegetable growing space this year so I'm putting my pumpkin in a hole in the middle of my back yard so it can grow at will. I filled the hole with some of my own compost and bone meal. I set out a Jaradale seedling yesterday, Sunday 5/4. I have 2 other seedlings indoors in case this one gets hit by frost or hail. I'm covering it at night but will leave it open to the elements during the day.

Last years pumpkin took over several of my raised beds and prevented me from planting anything else in those beds. Hopefully the sunnier spot will work out well for both it and me.

I've mailed pumpkin seeds to friends in Longmont, CO, Raleigh, NC, and Toronto, Canada, so hopefully we'll have some virtual competition this year.