Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 41 Entries. Friday, April 5 View Page Let's see how long I can keep up with entries this year before I get too busy. A little behind with this weather forecast. I need two or three good drying days before I can plow and till. It's going to be cutting it close next week.   Saturday, April 6 View Page I rotate between two main patches, so I'll be back in the western one this year. The last time I grew in it (2022 season), I planted winter rye in the fall of 22 after cleaning plants out, but didn't plow before tilling. I'm not sure how much that affected things, but we ended up in a drought here last year, so when I went to plow the rye, the ground was rock hard. The summer cover crop did ok, but the ground was still hard, without much rain. So.... tried to tear it up a bit with a mini excavator, filled the trenches in with leaf compost, then plowed perpendicular to the trenches and reseeded.   Sunday, April 7 View Page In addition to rotating patches, I also try to move around the planting locations within the plot. This is the spring 2020 aerial view , with the 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022 planting locations color coded. I'm overdue to grow from the outside to the inside (N-S, and S-N). This will allow me to phase in my tilling this time.   Monday, April 8 View Page Plowed   Tuesday, April 9 View Page Heating cables in, plugged in, and plastic down. The plastic should buy me a little time to get the little greenhouses patched up.   Wednesday, May 1 View Page Plants are in about normal time, not that great looking compared to previous years, hopefully things will turn around eventually. Mowed down the cover crop right after I took the pic, I'll probably have to mow a few more times before the plants outgrow the huts.   Monday, May 13 View Page I'm about a week behind where I'd like to be, but I think I say that every year. I goofed up something with them that set things back a bit this time - lesson learned. Had (hopefully our last) frost Saturday morning.   Sunday, May 19 View Page A few nice days, so letting things breathe a bit. Most all are down and running. This is one of the 2365s.   Saturday, June 1 View Page Mowed and plowed the cover crop in the center. It had a pretty good root mass. It was a mix of crimson clover, winter rye, hairy vetch, and a few peas in there.   Saturday, June 1 View Page All fertilized and tilled up pretty. Hopefully I got ahead of it enough that everything is decomposed before the pumpkin roots settle in. I like the way this works out - 80% of the patch was only tilled once this year instead of twice if I were to have knocked it all down in the beginning, as the weeds would have regrown already. I also seeded a narrow strip in the center with buckwheat just in case the vines don't make it that far.   Sunday, June 2 View Page I was hoping I wouldn't see this, or at least not this soon. Hopefully I discovered it early enough.   Tuesday, June 4 View Page I saw my first cucumber beetle here on June 1. I haven't seen another since that one but would expect to with the heat today. This is the latest first arrival that I can remember in a long time. The only thing I can attribute it to is that everywhere I grew pumpkins last year was planted into a cover crop mix last fall, and now looks like this. Winter rye, peas, vetch, and a little clover mix. It's over 6 feet tall and will be knocked down soon. Perhaps the cover crop has just kept the soil cooler and delayed the inevitable, we'll see.   Wednesday, June 5 View Page Guess it was just a delay in the inevitable. Glad I sprayed in time.   Saturday, June 22 View Page Not much exciting to update. Had cold, crappy weather and lost some good early leaves before switching to hot weather and burning leaves. The closest plant in the pic is a 2365. The discolored leaves were from overheating while still in the mini greenhouse. It suffered from a bit of trimming via deer after it outgrew the little greenhouse. I pollinated what I hope is the keeper on 6/21 - full moon day. The plant on the other side of it is the 2287 Sadiq. It was starting out good, but got pretty trashed in a storm and broke the main vine. At this point it appears to be a non competitive plant and I will likely keep a few pumpkins on it.   Sunday, June 30 View Page 839 Sandercock doing well. Time to get it set up to pack on the pounds. I use road sand first - it drains pretty well and it's cheap - less than $10 for all I need for the season.   Sunday, June 30 View Page After the sand, I add two layers of mill fabric and jack up the vines with some styrofoam blocks. I'll readjust the fabric in a few days but I just wanted to get it under there for now.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Unfortunately, the 2365B couldn't handle the heat stress last week and aborted. The next one down the main doesn't appear to be a good option, so we'll see with I can do on a secondary.   Wednesday, July 10 View Page 839 Starting to put on some pounds   Thursday, July 11 View Page It's always tough to tell color from pictures, but I have the best colored leaves this year. With minimal rain from the hurricane I was able to perfectly time a micronutrient foliar on wet leaves that stayed wet for quite a while. This is the 2266 Kisamore plant. Although the fruit isn't a great shape, it made a fantastic recovery from the early deer and wind damage.   Friday, July 12 View Page Lost the 839. Glad I was too busy to measure, I might had had my hopes up.   Saturday, July 13 View Page Deer made it past the wire, this is my best 2365. Treated and put a fan on it, hopefully it scabs over - this is my best shaped pumpkin.   Monday, July 15 View Page Storm got me today. Over an inch of rain. I needed that, but not if it's coupled with the straight line winds.   Sunday, July 21 View Page The 2365 that was nibbled appears to have healed. Cold mornings have affected the growth rates, as the day 30 measurement wasn't anything special. Hopefully with vine termination finishing up this week eventually some better temps will kick it into high gear. This one really reminds me of my 2365 from last year - excellent barrel shape and color. Unfortunately, it also has a stem split like last year. We'll see if this one can hang on for the long run.   Saturday, August 3 View Page The nonstop sound of a small shop vac is now present in the patch. It's moves a lot of air and seems to do a great job of drying things out. Unfortunately, the split continues to proceed deeper. This 2365 is nearly a twin of the one that I lost last year to a stem split.   Saturday, August 3 View Page The stem is practically an "innie" at this point. In a way, it may just boil down to a physics problem - in hindsight, I may have been better off terminating the main at the fruit, and lining the stem up with the incoming main. That would have been a major gamble at the time but I'd consider it next year if I have one with a short stem and a big enough plant.   Saturday, August 10 View Page Stem split made it all the way through. 1547#, about 10% over chart and still doing about 40# a day.   Monday, August 19 View Page Next year's patch is looking pretty. Hate to knock it down in peak bloom, but I want to be going into winter with a nearly mature cover crop before the deer mow it down for me.   Thursday, August 29 View Page To paraphrase a great line from the movie Contact - why grow six plants when 42 plants are only seven times the effort. Ignore the weeds. It was too much effort to pull them   Tuesday, September 10 View Page 2360 Montsma results. Unfortunately, this plant just could not handle the heat. Once I saw that it wasn't going to be competitive, I set multiple pumpkins on the plant. I shouldn't have kept five, and certainly not all on the same side of the plant. 852, 496, 464, 312, and the smallest was in the 200s. A bit disappointed with the color, but that can happen.   Thursday, September 12 View Page Not bad for minimal care and just throwing a cheap tomato cage on it (that then tipped over) - bumped my PB tomato slightly. Grown from the 6.55 Rodebaugh   Saturday, September 14 View Page 1565 Wolf 2024 (2287 Sadiq x 839 Sandercock) The 2287 plant that I went with was the backup plant to the 2287 that was eaten by a deer. It was a bit behind, then sustained damage to the main vine tip from the wind just after the first female. Instead of retraining a new main, I went with the first female, as the plant didn't seem robust enough to retrain and wait an extra week or two for a bigger plant at pollination time. The 1565 was only 8 feet out, and I also had two other fruit about 500# each on the plant as well. I wasn't too happy with the shape - between the deep rib and a lot of meat above that sucked in blossom end, I was a bit worried with transport but it survived fine.   Sunday, October 13 View Page 2225 Wolf (2266 Kisamore x 839 Sandercock) This plant was a survivor and produced a steady, good looking pumpkin. It had a bad start as a seedling, then came around and was pruned by deer after growing out of the mini greenhouse. I let the plant run on the larger side, and although it didn't seem to help on the late measurements I'm thinking it was packing on some weight on the inside.   Sunday, October 13 View Page Here's a look at the blossom end of the 2225. Over the last month, this half of the pumpkin started going from mild cantalouping to somewhat aggressive skin cracking. The key is keeping it dry once that starts to have a chance at avoiding rot.   Monday, October 14 View Page Back to the story of my other patch. This pic represents the last half of the pumpkins removed. I learned at lot this year by growing so many and hopefully I won't forget like I usually do. I planted almost all seeds with the expectation of orange, with the exception of a few seeds that I wanted to try out (1240 Wolf and 2200 Wolf). Some of my observations: - Average weight from the patch was in the 4-700 pound range. Most were pollinated the first week in July, and the plants were shot by September. We measured a few of them three times a week apart each time and it seems they missed out on some weight in the end due to disease. Plants with pollination issues on the main ended up with 2 or 3 fruit set on side vines. - As much as I had planned to do a few "interesting crosses", Almost all were open pollinated since the patch is about 35 minutes away from home. Same goes for other experiments i wanted to run, there just wasn't enough time. - I treated all the plants equally, but the better ones seemed slightly clustered toward the center of the patch. - I need to do a soil test next time. All I did was haul in some manure that really wasn't old enough. I have a feeling I'm lacking something that could at least help with the disease problems slightly for next year.   Monday, October 14 View Page Genetics, Genetics, Genetics. In the past I've convinced myself that maybe I just had a dud seed, the soil wasn't great in that particular spot, or it was just bad luck why a plant didn't preform. And while those all may be legitimate excuses at one time or another, growing seed multiples in similar soil really opened my eyes to a few things. Here's some notes to that end: - 500 Wolf 23 (2350 Geinger x 839 Sandercock) -[pollinator grew 1917dmg last year] I planted four of these. Real beauties, and quite consistent. I will be planting again. - 1040 Wolf (1215 Young x 717 Connolly) and 1120 Wolf (1040 x self) - This is quite an interesting line, but one that I'm done with. I don't know how else to describe it other than they use nitrogen.... differently. I do remember the original 1215 plant being darker and thinking it was just something local with that soil. Not so. Even in lower fertility soil, these plants make thicker, more robust vines and bigger leaves with better color and nice long stems. Completely different from their neighboring plants and I could walk out there after a certain point and know exactly which plants these were without looking at my map. The downside? vines are more brittle, more mutant vines and females along with trouble pollinating. - 162 Toboyek - I grew two. Similar plants, nothing overly impressive with them except they did their jobs. Very uniform vines and leaves. Set 3 on each plant, all great looking fruit. The fruit on one plant had a typical AG look, while the other plant had ribbing that showed a touch of cinderella influence. - 2143 Stelts - Couldn't take the heat at all but made some great colored pumpkins   Monday, October 14 View Page .... continued.... I had three pumpkins in the 900s out of this patch. The 1500 Lopresti almost made 1k. It was pollinated a few days before the rest which helped it a bit. Considering the success of the 2080 Lopresti this year (reverse of the 1500), I'd say there's potential in both those seeds. Good orange, and blocky shape. The 1260 Wolf went 940. Medium orange, and the plants defining feature was a longer node spacing and being pretty easy to work with. The 1917 Wolf was a beauty (pictured) and was a fantastic plant. I'll absolutely be growing it again. It did 30# a day for a week, so it really got handicapped once the disease set in.   Monday, October 14 View Page And the grand champion out of the patch. It wasn't even close, the 1803 Hazeltine blew everything else away by almost 200 pounds (it was about 1180 when I originally picked it). Fantastic barrel shape and good orange color. Probably a seed that needs to be given a better shot to see what will happen.   Monday, October 14 View Page I had seen studies where fruit are dipped in a calcium solution to extend the postharvest longevity. If it does work, I guess you probably aren't supposed to just eyeball the concentration. Glad I only tried it on this one, maybe I'll try it again on an expendable one next year in case it gets another case of the hives.   Monday, October 14 View Page One of the crosses I had hoped to make was 2200 Wolf x 1357 Wolf. The 2200 is a sibbed 1885, and the 1357 is a selfed 2174 Daletas. The 1357 plant was the pollinator to the 2365 Wolf. I figured *if* there was something special in that Daletas plant driving the success of the 2365, then perhaps the 1357 would make an even better pollinator for an 1885 line having locked in those genetics by selfing it in 2021. You can see a pic of the 1357 here: http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=328204 Unfortunately, my 2200 plant decided to abort all the pollinations I made this year. Here is the offspring from the 1357, nice orange with stripes.   Thursday, October 24 View Page My 2225 became the body of the clown car in what was yet another amazing carving display in Pittsburgh.   Thursday, October 24 View Page When I was pulling the seeds out of it, one of the carvers told me to look up. They had to cut the stem off as part of the carving, and this is what I saw. I've been inside over 2 dozen pumpkins over 2000#, and countless other big ones. I have never seen anything like this before. Had I accidentally broke off the stem prior to the weighoff, this would have been a DMG pumpkin. It appears to have been a stem split in the making, saved by keeping the vine elevated as the fruit grew so that there was no downward pressure as it lifted up.