Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 7 Entries. Saturday, May 3 View Page I'm off to a little bit of a late start this year. My seeds arrived today and I filed them, soaked them, and put them in wet paper towels and zip lock bags to let them soak for a day or two. Here are the seeds I have: 813 Lewis/Marrone, 355 Buglio, 575 Lewis, 661 Lewis/Marrone, 725 Lewis Marrone, and 1182 Parenty. I got these seeds from GiantPumpkinsOnline.com. This is my second year growing giant pumpkins and I have learned so much since last year. I can't wait to get things started! Sunday, May 4 View Page I finished up tilling the pumpkin patch today. It is 100ft by 40ft. I am thinking about doing 60ft x 40ft for the giants and the other 40ft by 40ft for jack o lanterns for my family and neighborhood kids. Sunday, May 4 View Page Pumpkin Patch Layout option 1 Sunday, May 4 View Page Pumpkin Patch Layout option 2 Sunday, May 4 View Page Pumpkin Patch Layout option 3 Monday, May 5 View Page I moved the seeds from the zip lock bags into pots today. I split the pots in half and then duck taped them back together. This will make it easier to transplant them into the patch. My daughter Emily and her friend Stacy picked two of the seeds to be "thiers". Emily picked the 725 Lewis/Marrone and Stacy picked the 813 Lewis/Marrone. My wife picked the 355 Buglio as hers. I'll be doing all the work in the patch, but it is nice to give them a connection to what is going on. I did make a BIG mistake on the 575 Lewis. It was showing a root already but it was upturned and I tried to straighten it out and broke the tip off. We'll see if it recovers. The 725 Lewis/Marrone was also showing a very long root already which is very encouraging! I did not break that one!! All the seeds are settled in their new homes on my garage bench with a nice southern view out the window and a grow light above. I am checking out drip irrigation options for the patch. T-tape is looking like a good one. I'm also trying to decide if I want to put weed mat down this year or not. I had a lot of trouble keeping up with the weeds last year. I received a very cool e-mail from TLISH today. He read my diary and has some relatives in my area. He gave me lots of good tips and shared some experiences and gave me some good encouragement. He also sent some cool pictures and a video of him cruising around in his pumpkin boat!!! Here is his video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fjTdhoyQKk Dreaming of the big one... Sunday, May 11 View Page All seeds have germinated and are growing well except for the 355 Buglio. I dug down and checked and it is not showing a root at all. I am not giving up on it yet. I planted a 902 Foss as a backup. I received it today along with his DVD. We are receiving a ton of rain tonight and are under a flood watch. The end of the week is looking promising for transplanting to the patch.