Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 18 Entries. Thursday, January 1 View Page Tweedledee - My favorite pumpkin from 2025. 477 pounds of leopard orange perfection. Grown on the 1366 Zunino with two other fruit on the same plant... Thursday, January 1 View Page Tweedledum - Tweedledee's twin, the 566 Zunino. A little heavier but not as symmetrical. Tweedledum was selfed on the 1366 Zunino and graced my front yard until early January... Friday, January 30 View Page Chopped! - I decided to put the old girl out of her misery today. It would be undignified and too odiferous to let her just melt into a pond of bubbly soup - like an orange Wicked Witch of the West. She was remarkably well preserved for her age with only a few soft spots, mainly around the stem. Hakuna Matata mi lady - you will be reborn... Friday, January 30 View Page The Red Badge of Courage - Soft rot spot on the bottom produced a bright red stain in the adjoining flesh. I bleed for my pumpkins. I've never had one bleed for me... Saturday, February 28 View Page It's a Beautiful Day - The poppies are starting to flash red and orange, birds are singing and it's 76 degrees in the shade. The buds are swelling and my head is bulging with pumpkin dreams... Tuesday, March 17 View Page Bipolar Disorder - The poppies are rioting in the front patch, and we are just starting a heat wave that will bring us into the low nineties for the rest of the week. It's hard to believe the stories of blizzards back east. Seems our weather is getting as bipolar as our political system. That's why I grow giant pumpkins. They never talk politics - although they do bitch about the weather a lot... Thursday, March 26 View Page Never Say Die - Found this volunteer today in an area where I poured the pumpkin soup I removed from Tweedledee. I gave Tweedledee to a local non-profit for a guess-the-weight fundraiser. When I went to claim her, she was basically a large bowl of rotten soup. I scooped the soup into two five-gallon buckets and dumped it at this spot. Maybe I really didn't need to buy all those auction seeds... Sunday, March 29 View Page Live or Let Die - I made the mistake of splashing a little water on the Tweedledee volunteer. It responded by doubling in size over the next few days. What to do now - a gorgeous happy plant. It's gonna kill me to pull this beautiful bastard... Sunday, April 5 View Page On the Run - My volunteer, named Gypsy Girl, has laid down and started to run. I gave her a second splash of water. That's it. No patch prep, no fertilizer, no wind or critter protection. She popped up in an awkward spot half under an oak tree. This definitely is all about how not to grow a giant pumpkin... Wednesday, April 8 View Page Garden Squatter - Gypsy Girl is squatting in the middle of an old tomato patch from 3 years ago. This ground has been left fallow ever since except for the spring poppies. I may till the ground around the plant because it is highly compacted, but I'm not sure Gypsy girl wants me messing around in her space... Friday, April 10 View Page Totally Tomatoes - I did an initial till of the new tomato patch. Added one yard of compost, 40 pounds of gypsum and some triple 16. Letting the mix cook a bit in-situ before planting in a few weeks... Saturday, April 11 View Page The Gypsy Challenge - I'm now committed to growing out my volunteer pumpkin plant Gypsy Girl. Since it will not win any weigh-offs, I'm proposing a new contest called the Gypsy Challenge. I've always spent endless hours and many bucks pampering my pumpkins. The challenge here is: grow the most pumpkin with the least effort and dollars. The winning metric is pounds per hour invested (lbs/hour) with a spending limit for the season of $50. I'm now keeping a spreadsheet of every hour invested and every dollar spent on Gypsy Girl. Since I didn't plant this sprout or do any soil prep work, I'm off to a great start. Let's see how much pumpkin we can get with the least amount of effort. The challenge is on... Wednesday, April 15 View Page Chillin' with Gypsy Girl - It's been cold, windy and overcast the last week with downpours yesterday. Gypsy Girl has slowed but laid down nicely and is on the move. I put up a wind break and ran a tiller around her campsite before the rain to loosen the soil up a bit. I've now clocked a total of 1.5 hours in her care. I don't count the time I spend admiring how pretty she is... Thursday, April 16 View Page Poppy Pull - I started prep on the main patch by pulling the poppies in the planting area. I found two gopher mounds, signs of field mice, and a bunny ran out when I started work. All the critters like poppies, including squirrels, deer, rabbits and even the two-legged varmints walking by... Sunday, April 19 View Page Poppy Purge - Filled up the bed of my truck with the piles of poppies I pulled from the planting area of my patch. I've already spent more time in the patch than I've invested in Gypsy Girl and I haven't even started the seeds yet... Sunday, April 19 View Page Splash Down - I'm finally starting the seeds for the front patch today. You may notice a theme here. Orange, more orange, freckled orange and of course, big orange... Monday, April 20 View Page Pumpkin Pop - After soaking and bagging the chosen ones, I stuck them on top of my computer underneath my cable modem. 26 hours later, 100% germination! Number Key: 17 = 1765 Young; R = Ruby; 13 = 1366; 56 = 566. Look at the legs on the two 566's. They were trying to sink roots into my computer case... Friday, April 24 View Page Go Girl - My volunteer, Gypsy Girl, has weathered another week of cold wind and 2" of rain. She just keeps truckin' and has doubled in size. Secondaries are now popping out everywhere. I've done nothing the last 10 days to encourage her - absolutely nothing. You go girl...