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.