Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 33 Entries. Saturday, March 2 View Page And so it begins! Yesterday, I bought potting soil, peat pots, and Daconil fungicide. I'm going to start getting supplies here and there. Keeping track of expenses is good, but we'll see how long I can keep it up! $26 on those items. I got a lot of free seeds in the last few weeks from nice growers on here. I think I spent about $20 in postage and envelopes. Good luck to everyone this season! Thursday, May 16 View Page The kids and I have four plants ready to plant out Saturday May 18th. They are the 1048 Engel, 585 Buglio, 1149 Todd, and 903 Boelman. Thank you to everyone that sent seeds to us! Friday, May 17 View Page The plants have been hardening off nicely and they are ready to plant tomorrow. The patches are as ready as they're going to get. The kids had fun removing some sod from the edge of the patch today and then they made a small mud hole and took turns jumping into it. Not the best thing for the soil but fun anyway! Monday, May 20 View Page There are 3 plants in the ground. The 585 Buglio, 1149 Todd, and the 903 Boelman. The 1048 Engel will go in tomorrow. The original plan was for two patches. I was talking to the kids this morning about the original plan that we will plant two plants in each patch and then pinch back to the best one each patch when they grow out some. Well, we have a separate 3000 s.f. vegetable garden not fully planted yet and they convinced me to plant the extra two plants there. They will have 25 x 25 area each plant. That soil needed a lot of amending, but we'll have to just see what happens! Tuesday, May 21 View Page So the drama is on! My husband saw the plants and said the kids cannot grow their pumpkins in the veggie garden. So we will see what happens next....... Wednesday, May 22 View Page Saw the first of the cucumber beetles this evening. So out comes the spray tomorrow. You better say your prayers, don't say I didn't warn you! Saturday, June 1 View Page Ok, so the frost last Saturday came and the only plant properly covered was the 585 Buglio. It is still going strong and the cucumber beetles are being controlled thus far. The kids still have 2 backup plants so they might go out after the heatwave. My husband wouldn't let us keep the ones in the veggie garden anyway! Tuesday, June 11 View Page Got some work done in the patch today. We moved the water tank into place and got that second patch finally tilled around the plants. The plants are all putting out runners now. The 585 Buglio is the strongest plant, it is about 4' long right now. I somehow put it in backwards so we are getting it turned around. My pumpkin inspector came on Sunday and gave some kind words. It has been a chilly June so far. Everything is ready for the races, we just need some warm sunshine now! Thursday, June 13 View Page This cool weather is not what we need for growing pumpkins! Friday, June 14 View Page The 585 is actually putting on growth in this cool weather. Can't wait to see what it will do when things finally warm up. It is turned in the right direction now after turning it a little each day over the last week. The other plants are putting on barely noticeable growth, but still look ok. Good luck on pollination everybody! Monday, June 17 View Page We finally got a warm sunny day and the pumpkins put a lot of growth on. There are a few side vines coming on now and the kids carefully pinched off a few early flowers. We are loving it! Thursday, June 27 View Page First female flower spotted on the 585 today. It is about 7' out on the main vine. We're hoping for a pumpkin out further than this, but we're still keeping it for now! Friday, July 5 View Page There is a female flower about 10' out that will be kept as a backup. I was hoping for 12' but I have July 15 as a goal for pollination for some reason. I'm thinking if I have three pumpkins pollinated 10, 12, and 14 feet out, then I can pick the best one later. This is the 585, none of the other plants are even close to this point. Monday, July 8 View Page The female that's 10' out is ready to open any day. There is another baby at 13' that will also be kept. I think that one will be too late, but who knows? The cucumber beetles are still trying to destroy everything, I haven't seen more than a few squash bugs though. The soap spray late in the evening seems to be working so far. (Our apiary is 30 feet away, so we aren't using chemicals, that's a big challenge here but well worth it when it comes to pollination of other crops and in the honey pot.) Here we grow... Wednesday, July 10 View Page Pollination day for the pumpkin at 10' out on the 585 Buglio! The honeybees are in action. We aren't hand pollinating this one. Sunday, July 14 View Page The female flower at 13' on the 585 Buglio was pollinated by the bees today. This is the second one so far. The one at 10' did take and is already growing. We'll see which one does better and one will be plucked eventually if the groundhog doesn't beat me to it. There are females on the Boelman plant ready to bloom soon. Monday, July 15 View Page I saw squash vine borers flying around my summer squash plants and laying eggs. I haven't seen them in the pumpkin patch yet, but I hope they stay away as long as possible. Funny story...I kept telling people over the last month that I was seeing locust shells in the garden when I was hoeing and asking if it is a year of locusts coming up. Then yesterday I saw a picture of them that it is actually a SVB larva shell!!! Oops. Ignorance is not bliss. The first pumpkin is 5 days old and is the size of a football. It has a nice oblong shape. The second one was pollinated yesterday. It looks like it took, I will know more tomorrow of course. Wednesday, July 17 View Page The SVB's are here. Our plant in the second patch is crippling along, the heat isn't treating it well. The females keep dying before they even open. I think it will go down soon. It never got a good start and then the cuke beetles got after it. The soil wasn't tilled in that patch and it was really heavy soil to begin with. So when that plant goes down we will till and plant a cover crop to start prepping it for next year. I would pull it out now, but the kids are keeping up hope that somehow it will pull through. Thursday, July 18 View Page Woodchuck be gone! I went down to the patch and wasn't looking around too much, I was looking at the pumpkin fruit,lol. I had walked right up, within 3 feet, to a woodchuck! This guy isn't afraid. Where was the .22 when I needed it???...not that I have one. This guy needs to go! Saturday, July 20 View Page Today one of the pumpkin fruits on the Buglio plant was culled. The fruit at 9' was 10 days old and it was about 12" around. The fruit at 13' out was 5 days old and it was the same size! We have another backup at 16' that was pollinated on July 18th. It wasn't a hard decision to cull the fruit at 9'. Thanks for all the support! We named our fruit at 13' "Turbo" since it grew faster than the one pollinated 5 days before it. :) Wednesday, July 24 View Page There is sand under Turbo! The kids are excited to see it growing every day. This one is 10 days old tomorrow so we will get some stats. Friday, July 26 View Page Yesterday we got some stats on Turbo for 10 DAP...31"!!! Wow, that is great, if we can keep the woodchuck and my 2 year old son from touching it that is. :) 42 days until the weigh off Sept. 5th. Saturday, July 27 View Page The kids had planted another plant very late, I don't have the specifics. The vine is about 6' long right now and put out the first female. They didn't keep track of what seed it was, but the little fella looks green so we may have a big squash for Halloween. We want to grow it out further on the vine but may let this one pollinate out. Sunday, August 4 View Page Today "Turbo" is 20 days old and 36" cc. Still putting on growth, but seems to be slowing down or didn't grow for a few days. Still looks healthy. "Underdog" is 25" cc. 10 dap. The plant that was weak from the start on the backup patch finally got pulled today. It kept aborting any fruit that it set, we gave it all the chances it could get. I was reluctant to pull it because it was my daughter's plant. But the kids need to learn these things happen. So they will share the other plants now and there is a second fruit on the Underdog plant that I didn't measure today. So we still have 3 fruits going for 3 kids. Friday, August 9 View Page So 2 out of the 4 patches are empty due to disease. The 585 got a case of what I think was Yellow Vine Virus according to the pictures I saw on Matt D's descriptions. The other weak plant I think was ultimately downy mildew. Both of these are said to be carried by squash bugs. They haven't been a major problem this year, but I know they are there. So that is a lesson to watch out better for them in the future. The kids prepared a soil sample from where the 585 was and it was sent to UMass today. We are planning to plant a cover crop of mustard. We'll see how that goes and in fall it will be mowed tilled in. Then adjust for potassium, lime, and phosphorous when we get our test results back. I'm being told the patch should rest a few weeks between the mustard being tilled in and planting a cover crop of winter rye so we'll try to do that. In spring, we'll see how crazy it can get with composted manure and all the rest! It is kind of funny when the diary entries are about what you're planning to do instead of what you've actually been doing. :) In the meantime, we have 2 fruits on our mystery plant that are growing nicely. There are some smaller plants on the late patch that haven't even set any fruit yet. Maybe we'll get something off them for Halloween, but they are also good to practice growing techniques on that we learned about this year for the kids. Sunday, August 11 View Page Greenie had another fruit pollinated on the main vine today. The first fruit that pollinated on that vine I had mentioned didn't take. This one is about 9' out. The vine really took off over the weekend and we know is very late but is now about 14' long. We are learning from this plant and hope to get a few nice kins for Halloween time if possible. It is keeping the kids happy too since the other plants had to come out. I am realizing that the Buglio plant had humungous leaves! Underdog is now our biggest fruit. She is pear shaped and put on some good growth over the weekend. It will be 20 dap on Wednesday so we are waiting to get some numbers on it. The same plant has another fruit pollinated about the same day that we were going to cull so I never got a number on it. But now that the 585 was pulled we are keeping it. There is a third small fruit pollinated on an unknown date that we might keep for a little while. This plant is super healthy except for some sun scalded leaves that happened during the July heat wave. It had thrown out some secret tertiaries, but we can't get to them all to prune. So it is kind of a jungle. And now has more room to grow out since the other plant is gone. The kids got Champion Ewe at a small sheep show on Saturday, that was nice and they did a good job showing. Wednesday, August 14 View Page Farmers 2, Groundhogs 0...no rematches please! Wednesday, August 28 View Page Ok, so I haven't written in a while. The kids show sheep so we've been busy with that and their 9th show of the season was last weekend. Only 3 more to go! Anyway, we have one good pumpkin still growing. It is the backup of the backup, but it is exciting to grow for us anyway. The weigh-off is in 8 days. Right now, I think it could be almost 200 lbs. We haven't taped it, I don't know why. It's not setting any records anyway and I think it is more fun for the kids to keep guessing how much it weighs. We have another late plant that is growing 4-5 pumpkins on it for halloween time. The biggest one is basketball size right now. That plant had looked like it would throw off green squashes, when the females were tiny they were green. But now they are bright shiny yellow so I was wrong. The leaves look really healthy, so that's great. The second plant on that patch was taken out since it was slower and we didn't need a jungle over there. Friday, August 30 View Page Our pumpkin is still growing. Only 6 days until the weigh-off, so I just hope nothing happens between now and then. The kids have so much fun taking them to the fair and this is their only one left. I'm thinking it's close to 200, we'll see! Thursday, September 5 View Page Weigh-off today. The trailer is backed into place and the kids pruned off all the vines that were in the way. We haven't taped it since it was 20 days old, so it will be a surprise. It must be in the 200's. We will really appreciate those 1000+ lbers and anything bigger than ours! It is exciting for the kids (and parents) and good sportsmanship. The growers of the bigger ones are always nice and encouraging and that shows the class in this sport/hobby!!! Friday, September 6 View Page The pumpkin was 265 lbs. at the fair yesterday so that's a personal best for the kids and me. We got a pretty pink 6th place ribbon and a goal to break 300 next year. Adam brought a "small" pumpkin to the youth hall. It ended up being 91 lbs and got a blue ribbon for biggest pumpkin entered in the hall. It was all really fun! Next year, if the kids get a pumpkin over 500 lbs. they can bring it to the BigE. We will have to get an actual plan for some heavy equipment to load them, though! Thank you to everyone who helped. Even the tiniest bits of advice are huge to us new growers. We wish everyone personal bests at the scales this fall!!! Tuesday, September 17 View Page First actual light frost overnight last night. The pumpkin was covered and didn't get damaged. I didn't look at the leaves yet. There are 2 fun pumpkins growing on that last plant. They are about maybe 150 lbs and 50 lbs right now, just fun ones for fall decorating. I forgot to say before that the tall sunflowers won at the fair at 14' tall. They grew so easy, I wonder how tall they would get if we actually watered and fertilized them! The tall corn hadn't shot up yet at the time of the fair, I didn't get an official measurement but it wasn't as tall as the corn. So maybe 13' at best on Sept 7th. It started to shoot up after the fair and is over 15' now and still growing. I'm assuming they're heavier feeders so we'll get down some manure this fall and research how to grow them. Like I said, we didn't do anything special with them and they grew so easy. They don't take up much space, so we'll grow some for sure next year and try for some more height. We also want to try a long gourd. They look so fun, too! Wednesday, September 18 View Page There was another frost last night so the plants are done. The pumpkins were covered, so they are fine. Hopefully they hang in there until October for fall decorating. That late plant I talked about with the two pumpkins had also produced a 100 lb pumpkin for a youth hall entry into one of the fairs, so not bad for such a small, late plant. 100+150+50 lbs of pumpkin, not even trying! Now, that's what you call an Atlantic Giant. :) The kids are going to do a 4H gardening project with their plants next year. They should learn a lot with all the record keeping, etc. I know they do with the sheep projects, not to mention all the agricultural work!