Finally a female bloom

I finally had a female bloom develop and open, it was pollinated this Friday 8/4/06.
I trimmed off 3 side vines this week so hopefully the plant will focus on growing the pumpkin and not the vines now.
I'm also fertilizing weekly, so hopefully I'll see some fruit soon.

Dave's plant is taking over his yard and he already has a sizable fruit.

Hail !!!!!! - June 24,2006

I noticed this morning that I had my first male blossom bloom on the plant in the front yard. Later in the day I made a quick run to the local shopping center only to have hail strike while I was gone and no one at home covered my pumpkins.

I will watch the plants for a few days to see if they make a miraculous recovery, but in the meantime, I have another seed started that I will be putting outdoors soon.

I had thought about rigging up some protective covering for the 2 plants since Colorado is notorious for summer hail. But I had procrastinated since they had done so well last summer. Guess this is another lesson learned for next summer's attempt.

June 21 - The competition!

I can definitely say that using Miracle Grow makes a difference in how one neighbor's plant looks over another. Dave's plant is definitely more robust than mine.

I started another seed indoors today to add to my backdoor plant, just in case that plant dies because of all the holes in its stem.

June 17,2006 - One plant definitely better than the other

The backyard plant has more holes in the main stem and I doubt that it is going to survive, but I will keep babying it. I'm tempted to get another seed from Dave and plant it in anticipation of the backyard one dying.

I applied some Age Old Grow 12-6-6- liquid fertilizer last Friday on June 9 , to both plants, and the plants seem to be a littler more robust. We have had 90-100 F temperatures this past week and we even had rain yesterday. We've been lucky, no hail yet.

Here's the front yard plant.



Neighbor Max, 3 doors down also planted a seedling from Dave in their front yard so our street is going to have quite the pumpkin presence pretty soon.

June 10, 2006 - 2 plants thriving

Left picture:Backyard Right picture : Front yard

I planted a seed inside on April 30 and set it on top of the water heater to stay warm. It germinated on May 12.

I direct seeded the front yard plant in the ground on May 7th under a Wall of Water and it germinated on May 16th.

The outside temperatures lately have been in the 80-90 F range and I've been watering the 2 plants every evening about a gallon of water each. I noticed that the backyard plant has scars on the stem, I wonder if the squirrels have started chewing on it?

The spinach is doing quite well and we've been eating it regularly.

The front yard plant gets the afternoon sun and seems to be thriving quite well.

Pumpkin quilts in Colorado

I've been to 2 quilt shows so far this summer and noticed that pumpkins are showing up there as a subject.

Berthoud, Colorado, &
Estes Park, Colorado

Obtained Seeds - the 2006 Season has begun! - 4/30/06 12:30 pm

The 2006 pumpkin season has had its official kick off. I obtained my seeds today.

This year I've decided to plant bigger pumpkins.

Last year the backyard produced a 75# beauty in only 1/2 a season. I'm hoping for bigger since I will be home all summer to take care of it.

Dave gave me seeds for a

• 351 Noel 05
• F 771 Stellpflug
• M Unknown

That's for you pumpkin geeks. For the non geeks, it has the potential to be big and green. Dave says it is an Atlantic Giant.

We may have some more competition this year, neighbor Paul may also participate. He's a fellow engineer, so who knows where the competition may go to this year. (grower trivia: I'm an Industrial engineer by degree, Dave is Mechanical, and I don't know what kind Paul is.)

Dave has his hole dug anticipating being able to plant. He has several choices of seeds he received from fellow pump addicts on the web in Massachusetts and Morrison,CO. My Noel 05 seeds are from Massachusetts.

We had snow and freezing weather last week, so I'll start my seed in doors this week. My gardening book says the average last frost date for Colorado is May 6. But we know what averages can do to tender pumpkin plants.

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/