Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 326 Entries. Saturday, January 30 View Page Usually in the winter I do an experiment or two with some of my "secondary" seeds. This year I wanted to see if "moldy" seeds had any affect on germination and also how seeds are "processed" before planting affects their growth. So group one (normal) took one moldy and one non-moldy, sanded and soaked them (what I would call "normal processing". Second group, one moldy one not, were only soaked. Third group, one moldy, one not, were only sanded. Fourth group (pure), one moldy, one not, were not "processed" at all. These eight seeds were all planted in the same soil at the same time, same environment, seven of the eight seeds germinated. The only one that didn't was the moldy "pure" seed, but I saw no other distinguishing differences in using moldy seeds. On processing, all the seeds sprouted within the same 12 hour window, however after several days there was a considerable difference. The "normal" plants shedded their seed skins faster and showed no damage to the cotyledon leaves (unlike all the others) and produced their first true leaf a day or two before the others. Saturday, January 30 View Page Every growing season I try to add one more thing to help better the previous year's best. 2006 was my rookie year (373 lbs.) with little knowledge of what I was doing. 2007 I added way more manure and worked the soil more (596 lbs was my biggest but I had one plant with seven pumpkins on it all over 200 lbs). 2008 I started to prune more aggressively (846 lbs). Last year I started using boards to walk on and I install a burlap fence to reduce wind damage (887 lbs). So what's in store for this year? Saturday, February 6 View Page So I came to the conclusion that what my pumpkins needed was "more time". I need to pollinate earlier such that they have all of July and August to put on 100 lbs a week. Last year most of my pumpkins were pollinated mid July, so if I could move pollination date up by two weeks, that's 200 lbs. I friend of my wife had a bunch of windows they wanted to get rid of, what to do with windows? Build a greenhouse! Saturday, February 6 View Page The beginning design, it's roughly 10' x 12'. I've used small plastic greenhouses in the past, planting around May 10th or so and by mid June the plants have out grown them (which is about the time they want to come off anyway). So a bigger greenhouse means planting earlier. Saturday, February 6 View Page As with any good home project, there was blood involved. :-) Saturday, February 6 View Page I have two fears, the first is "cooking" my plants. So I'll have platic windows on the ends that will open up and allow ventilation (maybe I'll have to install fans too), and I may redesign this so that the window sides actually prop open from the top, we'll see. Saturday, February 6 View Page My second fear is being able to move this after the plant is established. It moves pretty easy now but it doesn't have the windows in it yet and there's no plant to worry about damaging. Wish me luck. Sunday, March 21 View Page Well yesterday at 11:00AM it was 63 degrees so Jonas and I decided to paint the bottom of one of our greenhouses. Today at 11:00AM it's 33 degrees and snowing! Will spring never come? Sunday, March 21 View Page This is the larger of the two greenhouses, it'll be screened on the top with plastic windows that will flip down, stationary plastic on the lower half. This is turning into a lot of work, hopefully it'll be worth it. Thursday, April 15 View Page Beautiful day today (55F), took it off from work to get my patch worked before the forecasted days of rain ahead. Added 8-10 yards of horse manure from my good friends at Windswept Farm. Thursday, April 15 View Page Also borrowed my good neighbor's (Gary Boutin) dump trailer, made the job much easier. Thursday, April 15 View Page Also added 4 yards of intervale compost. I was debating as to whether to till it in or leave it on top (Langevin latest book advocates a "no till" policy) but the patch was fairly compressed from rain, snow and frost that I tilled it to loosen up the soil, plus it already had some weeds starting. I hate weeds! Thursday, April 15 View Page Built these "patch" boots to reduce compaction of the soil when walking in the patch, we'll see how well they work, I think I need a tighter strap design though. Friday, April 16 View Page Starting my "early bird" seeds tonight, four seeds, of which only two will actually make it into the patch (cause I only have two large greenhouses). I brought two seeds from the VGVGA on-line auction for $20 (good deal) 1263 Pitura '07 and 1378.5 Pitura '07. The other two seeds are from last year's biggest (887) pumpkin (Dufus). Sunday, April 18 View Page Cold and rainy weekend, hooked up my 500 gallon rain catcher, may as well take advantage while we got it. Thursday, April 22 View Page Six days old, my two 887s were the first up, pushing ground after only three days. Saturday, April 24 View Page My grow light system, my two 887s are the ones in front. Saturday, April 24 View Page This was the last one up (Pitura 1263), definitely has some issues, was struggling to shred the seed casing. Sunday, April 25 View Page One week old, nice board cot leaves on three of the four. Monday, April 26 View Page After much labor and consternation the greenhouses are finally into position - thank goodness for the backhoe which made the job much easier and allowed me to get these into place without walking in the patch. Monday, April 26 View Page So this is greenhouse #1, roughly 10'x12'. still have to install the flip down plastic windows (which have screen behind them), this is for ventilation. Monday, April 26 View Page This is greenhouse #2, roughly 8'x8'. Plastic on the east/west sides, glass on the north/south sides. Monday, April 26 View Page This turned out to be a bigger project then I had anticipated and not one of my best engineered. I think getting them off will require four hardy individuals. Monday, April 26 View Page I have 11 one gallon jugs of colored water for each greenhouse, this will hopefully capture some heat during the day (while they're outside) and dissipate it at night (while they're inside). Tuesday, April 27 View Page Mother Nature is cruel sometimes, snowing like crazy this morning. Tuesday, April 27 View Page Poor flowers, buds and birds are not sure what to make of all this white stuff. Tuesday, April 27 View Page Man, was all pysched to get some plants in the ground - yesterday was 66F degrees (90F inside the greenhouses), this morning 32 and snowing (48 inside the greenhouse - but that won't last long) Wednesday, April 28 View Page After 24 hrs of snow this is what the patch looks like, gees I feel like I'm trying to grow in Alaska. Wednesday, April 28 View Page Finally stopped snowing about noon, an hour of rain or so, then the sun came out. At 4:00PM it's 50F! Wednesday, April 28 View Page I shoveled the snow off before I took the previous picture, opened up the door and it was toasty warm inside. Wednesday, April 28 View Page My cheap-o thermometer says it's almost 100F, I guess with the bright sun and reflecting off all that snow it's heating up inside, that should help warm the soil. Maybe I can still plant on schedule. Friday, April 30 View Page Well the boys are in the grown (two of them at least). This is the first time I've had plants in before May. This is our 887 from last year, looking real good to start, it's only 13 days since the seed was potted and it's high time to get it in the ground, roots are shooting out everywhere. Friday, April 30 View Page This is the Pitura 1378 also looking to be off to a good start. This year I'm also trying Mycorrhizal (Pumpkin Pro) so I sprinkled that in the hole along with the plant. Attempted to remove the peat pot but the roots were already penetrating such that I figured I'd do more damage than good trying to remove it, so just buried the whole pot. Friday, April 30 View Page I started four plants but I'm only planting two so far, these two greenhouses are on the high side of the patch, the low side is too wet to plant. The small greenhouse in the middle is there to warm composted soil such that I can use it to bury vines. Friday, April 30 View Page Sorry, the last picture and this picture should be swapped. This is the low end of my patch (I had already planted two rows of sunflowers) but you can see it's underwater, looks like a dam broke. Hence it will be a couple more weeks before the two lower plants go in. Friday, April 30 View Page My second lineup, starting today. 1237 Horton, 1170 Breznick, (2) 300 Keim and (2) 851 Keim. The 300 grew last year's 851 which was a great boat shape and bright orange, so I'm hoping for that again. Three of these will go into my patch, the other three will be given to neighbors. Thursday, May 6 View Page Been rainy and windy all week. I had put my other smaller plastic greenhouses out to start warming the soil and the wind blew one of them away. Hence I added a couple boards to prop my big greenhouses up (just in case), the wind can get pretty intense up here. Put some good size rocks on the edges of my plastic huts to help keep them down. Thursday, May 6 View Page This is the Pitura 1378 at one day short of three weeks. Two nice leaves with the third just starting. Been cool this week so the water jugs remain inside 24/7. Saturday, May 8 View Page Here are my second group of seeds after one week, looking good. The two left ones are our 851 (which we called Demetry) from last year, the two in the middle are our 300 from '07 and the two on the right are 1170 Breznick (back) and 1237 Horton (front) both from last year. Saturday, May 8 View Page I've planted 10 seeds so far this year and they've all sprouted. In the patch I currently have the 1378 Pitura and 887 Keim. Originally I was going to only plant two more in my patch but have decided to go with three more instead, those three will be choosen from the second batch, I'm hoping 1170 Breznick, 1237 Horton and 851 Keim but if one of the 300 looks really good I may have to switch it up. From my first batch I also had a 1263 Pitura which is still in the pot and not really looking so good, just starting a second leaf. I may just plant it out in my topsoil pile and see if it does anything. The other 887 Keim I gave to my neighbor Mike, which he promptly planted. Target date to plant this second group is next weekend, which means I will be left with three plants, another one will go to Mike and the other two I'll plant at the neighbors (Erskines). Last year the Erskine plot produce five or six 150+ pumpkins off of one plant (with little or no work from me - I tilled), the largest was 348 lb weighed in at the Mazza weigh-off. Talked to another friend last night who just brought a new place and so now they have room to grow pumpkins so I will probably start a couple more plants next week for him as well as a couple for neighbor Josh. Saturday, May 8 View Page Today's harvest - rhubarb and eggs, check out the size of that third one? That's the biggest egg we've ever had, like twice the size of normal, sign of things to come? I hope so. Sunday, May 9 View Page Happy Mother's Day! And once again it's snowing! At least it's not sticking this time, suppose to be cold the next couple of days, not good. Sunday, May 16 View Page This is the 1378 Pitura at 28 days old, doing ok but not going gang-busters, working on a fifth leaf. Sunday, May 16 View Page This is my 887 (also at 28 days old), not doing so great, the cot leaves are already done (that's the fastest I've seen that happen). This greenhouse opens on the side such that I think all the moisture in this house is being evaporated. So I watered the whole area down and mulched it with grass clippings to try to hold in the moisture. The 1378 is in the other greehouse which has a different ventilation system such that it holds the moisture better so it wasn't mulched. To mulch or not to mulch that is the dilemna - I like to mulch because it reduces weeding and holds moisture - but the downside side (I've been told) is that it promotes disease. Any opinions? Sunday, May 16 View Page Putting my second group into the ground today, this is our 300 at 15 days old. Sunday, May 16 View Page This is the 1170 Breznick, this will be the third year now growing a Breznick seed, both previous years they have produce my heaviest pumpkins. Thanks Mark! This seed is daughter of the Vermont state record. Sunday, May 16 View Page Another Vermont seed, the 1237 Horton, four of my five plants are Vermonters - they say buy "local" - even better when they are "free". Thanks Wilbur! Sunday, May 16 View Page Also today planted four hills of potatoes (taking up "holes" in the patch) and transplanted a bunch of sunflowers. The sunflowers are volunteers that I move from inside the patch to the edges, looks like another bumper crop. Saturday, May 22 View Page This is the 1378 Pitura at 35 olds (7 wks) old. Not sure what's up with the hole in the leaf, it was there when the leaf was just four inches wide, just grew that way, the hole got larger as the leaf got larger. Saturday, May 22 View Page Today I noticed thousands of tiny (and I mean tiny) little bugs all over my second plantings. They look like some sort of weevil or beetle (tried to indentify them on the internet - maybe a seed beetle?) Sorry the photo is not so good to actually see the bug in the magnifing glass but notice all the black specs on the water jug - that's not dust or grains of sand, it's bugs! Haven't noticed any determential signs on the plants so far so I'm not freaking out (yet). Put out an email to my VGVGA buds for their opinions. Saturday, May 22 View Page This is my 887 plant at 35 days old, cot leaves our pretty much gone and the plant appears to be picking up a bit (finally), maybe the mulch helped. Tuesday, May 25 View Page Here's the 1378 Pitura at 38 days old, vine is on the run and in the right direction (grow baby grow). The 887 is just starting to think about vining. None of my VGVGA buds have seen my tiny black bugs before but since I see no adverse affects on my plants I'm going to deduce that they are harmless, appear to be less concentrated now anyway. But I hear the cucumber beetles are on their way - time to load up the insectides. I've got some Merit and Talstar P on order since Breznick advised me not to use Sevin (which is what I've used in the past) because it will kill the mycorrhizal - which I'm trying for the first time this year. Thanks for the heads up Mark. Friday, May 28 View Page This is the 887 Keim finally starting to vine, hasn't hit the ground yet though. Seems to have picked up a bit since I mulched, probably holding the moisture better. Also it's been fairly sunny, temps in the 80's, two days earlier this week was in the 90's (record high in Burlington on May 25). Friday, May 28 View Page Another angle of the 887, looking a bit droopy, the houses are great for protecting against the wind (which snapped the extra plant I had, 1263 Pitura) but they can get pretty hot, have to be careful to open them up enough to relieve some of the heat without exposing them too much to wind and varmits! Friday, May 28 View Page This is the 1378 Pitura at 41 days old, vine is about 3 feet long now. It's about time to worry about bugs, received my order of Merit and Talstar but forgot to ask if these will damage the mycorrhizal, anyone know? Email me at [email protected] - thanks. Friday, May 28 View Page Sorry, here's the picture that was suppose to go with the last entry - we really need an edit function on here. Another discussion - to bury the vine or not? Last year I buried both the main and secondaries, my friend John just buries the secondaries as he wants to see what's happening with his main at all times, so not sure which way to go, will probably bury main since it will throw out more roots - that has to be a good thing I would think (?). Saturday, May 29 View Page It's the weekend, so J and I thought we'd camp out, the weather has been great but we actually could use some rain, things are getting dry and I planted some trees yesterday. Saturday, May 29 View Page I took a vacation day yesterday and spent the whole day in the vegetable garden, put in the remainder of our plants, tomatoes, zucchini, etc. Mulched everything and set up the soaker hose. Monday, May 31 View Page Happy Memorial Day everyone! J in his sand box trying to dig a fox hole... Monday, May 31 View Page J was helping me with some hoeing in the pumpkin patch and he found this volunteer. Looks pretty stout but I have no idea what pumpkin it is from. I have given plants to four neighbors, if for some reason one of them have died maybe I'll dig up this guy to replace, other wise it'll be culled. :-( Monday, May 31 View Page My buddy, missing another tooth - thanks to his sister. :-) Friday, June 4 View Page This is the 887 Keim at day 41, vine is a couple feet long now, probably have only a few more days before it hits the greenhouse wall, I'll have to line up a few friends this weekend to help move the greenhouses (which means I need to get my wind fence up first). Always so much to do... Friday, June 4 View Page Well I got my wish for rain, couple days this week, good thing too as my gravity fed water barrels were empty. But the rain really caused the weeds to shoot up and also bring out the slugs! Note the little orange jar, that is my approach to slugs, in jar of gasoline and hand pick 'em. We have THOUSANDS of slugs, in the past I've tried beer, Slugo and last year even put up a sand barrier, nothing works very well. Tried chickens one year, they do eat some but do more damage with their stracthing then they're worth. Friday, June 4 View Page With mature plants the slugs aren't that much of a problem, but when they are young the slugs can wipe them out, they especially like our sunflowers which is where I find the majority of them since the flowers are on the edge of the patch (surrounded by high grass). Friday, June 4 View Page This is my 300 at 27 days old, looking pretty good, going to vine in a couple more days I think. Friday, June 4 View Page This is my largest plant, the 1378 Pitura, vine is now about six feet long. I applied Merit yesterday as a drench, this is a systemic insectide that the plant is suppose to soak up and then it kills the bugs as they try to eat the plant. I was worried about adverse affects so I contacted the manufacture (Bayer) who told me that applied per the label this product should not harm earthworms. Well I used just a bit less than 1/4 tsp for my 2 gallon watering can (label said 1/4 tsp per 2.5 gallons - so I was pretty close) but today I saw two worms dead on the surface - so I'm not sure what's up with that, I may have to do a side experiment on my own. Beware you users of Merit - stay tuned. Friday, June 4 View Page Our first female! It will be culled of course since it's only about six feet out but it's great to see anyway. Abigail's track ended last week, Jonas' tee ball has one more week so hoping some time will free up such that I can get the houses off and get to weeding soon. Sunday, June 6 View Page Well the plan for today was to remove the greenhouses since both my earlier plants are just a day or two from hitting the end, problem was Mother Nature wasn't following the script. Rained all day today, cold and WINDY. So my brother-in-law and I just slid the greenhouses about a foot to buy me a couple more days. Note the weeds that are now on the "inside". Forecast is low in the 40's for the next couple nights so figured if I could keep the boys in for a couple more days that would be good. Sunday, June 6 View Page I was hoping to bury vines and trim the stump "after" moving the greenhouses but with the wind I didn't dare expose the plants. Just did it inside but since you can't stand up straight my back is paying the price now. Sunday, June 6 View Page Started putting up my wind fence in the rain, good thing too as you can see what the wind is doing to the sunflowers in the foreground. Can't go all the way around the patch yet until I get the houses moved out. What a soaker today, went through three sets of clothes, I need a new raincoat :-) Did get some weeds pulled though you couldn't tell it from this photo. High of 60 today and that was this morning, hopefully better weather on the way. Wednesday, June 9 View Page The slug wars continue, note the holes in the sunflower leaves and my "tub of slugs". Put down some Sluggo too. Wednesday, June 9 View Page This big boy will soon be in the tub. Wednesday, June 9 View Page This is my Breznick plant at 32 days old, note the funky "S" curve in the main, hopefully it's not going to be a ribbon. Wednesday, June 9 View Page This is my 887 Keim plant, it has huge leaves, in fact so big it appears the leaf stalk has collasped. This plant has now grown to the edge of the greenhouse and as much as I want to keep them on it's time for them to come off. Wednesday, June 9 View Page This is my 1378 Pitura at 46 days old with the greenhouse removed. Neighbors Mike, Bill and my friend Phil helped me pick up the houses and get them moved. THANKS GUYS! Was easy with so much man power. The female at ~7' was removed soon after this photo, had a nice long stem on it though. Wednesday, June 9 View Page This is my 887 Keim without the protective greenhouse, the wind was blowing so I hustled to put up a quick wind fence but this plant has such big leaves that a couple of them got flipped in the wind - darn wind - my biggest adversary. Sunday, June 13 View Page Am pleased to say that I did conduct an experiment to see if drenching Merit impacted the worm population. I put five healthy worms in each container, one container got nothing, another got one dose of plain water, one got one dose of Merit and the last container got two doses of Merit (a doze was consider five waves over from the watering can). Next morning all the worms seemed to have survived - yay! Sunday, June 13 View Page This is my 300 (Romeo), vining nicely and starting to run in the right direction. Keeping on the greenhouse simply for wind protection. Sunday, June 13 View Page Here's a shot of some of our sunflowers and potatoes. Yesterday for the first time ever everyone in the family was in the patch at the same time, weeding - that was nice, but we barely put a dent in the weeds. Sunday, June 13 View Page Here's the 1170 Breznick, outgrowing the greenhouse but it's vine has yet to hit the ground so with our wind I don't dare exposure it until I can bury the vine , we'll see if it can last that long. Sunday, June 13 View Page Here's my wind fence which was shredded over the winter by the darn mice, still better than nothing, I may have to go get some more of the black stuff to protect the younger plants once the greehouses come off. Sunday, June 13 View Page Here's my smallest plant in the patch, 1237 Horton. I did have a smaller volunteer plant which I "attempted" to transplant yesterday (it had about four true leaves on it). I had never dung up that size plant before and was surprised to see the lack of any "large" roots, lots of tiny hair like roots running everywhere but I guess I expected something more substantial. Sunday, June 13 View Page My 887, it's about ~8' long with a couple ~5' long secondaries, no sign of females yet but the leaves are huge. Sunday, June 13 View Page Here's the biggest plant in the patch, the 1378 Pitura. I've already nipped three females off of this plant, one on the main and one off of each first row secondary. The main is ~10' with the first secondaries ~7', hope it keeps going, I'd like to pollinate a keeper before the end of June. Sunday, June 13 View Page Yay, Celtics win! Here's the second female to appear on the main of the 1378, this may be a keeper (Fair pumpkin?) we'll have to see, should be 10-11 feet out. That's the good news, bad news something got into our garden and pulled up and ate the corn... I was so mad, it was looking so nice at ~6" high. Replanted today but now we're really late... Peter Cottontail is lucky I didn't see him in there, he found the only possible way in, I doubt he could have found his way out with me chasing him with a shovel.... agh! Thursday, June 17 View Page This is my 887 showing signs of the wind. So far this year wind has been my biggest issue, no sightings of cucumber beetles yet, maybe I'll get lucky this year and they'll just pass me by..... Thursday, June 17 View Page This is the 1170 Breznick, it's sending out a reverse main (my 1289 Breznick last year did the same thing). Last year I let it go but not sure whether it helped or hurt the plant, any opinions? Thursday, June 17 View Page This is the 1237 Horton, only plant still in it's greenhouse, mainly for wind protection, can't really close it any more. It's vine is growing up and to the south, it's suppose to be heading east, ugh. Guess I'll have to redirect it once it hits the ground as I don't want to twist the stump. Thursday, June 17 View Page This is Romeo (300 Keim) doing fairly well, at least vining in the right direction. Note the marigolds I've planted around all my plants, maybe this is keeping the cuke beetles away? It was something I read in Langevin's latest book. Can't hurt I guess. Saturday, June 19 View Page The wind has been relentless the last couple days, wind fences are really taking a beating, patch looks like a war zone. Trying to keep everything together..... Can't see it in this photo but the foreground plant (887 Keim) has it's first pumpkin on the main about 9-10 feet out and a second one right behind it. Will probably pollinate them both and cull one shortly there after. Sunday, June 20 View Page We really need an edit function on here. Sorry about that last photo, those were my father's day presents - more soaker hoses - yeah! And a pumpkin mug from my son. This photo is the one that should have went with the last entry. Sunday, June 20 View Page This is my largest plant, the 1378 Pitura, though it's vine is not as thick as the 887 Keim. It's been throwing pumpkins out left and right, I think I've nipped at least six or seven off of secondaries already and one off the main vine. I'm going to try to "only" grow one pumpkin per plant this year, we'll see. Sunday, June 20 View Page Ah crackies, muffed the photo again, must be time for bed..... well here is the photo that goes with the last entry. Note the first male flower, another father's day present. Sunday, June 20 View Page Some of our sunflowers, coming along nicely, some how surviving all this wind. Sunday, June 20 View Page Happy Father's Day to all of you pumpkin dads out there. Here's a card my daughter made for me, pretty cute. Thursday, June 24 View Page Added some new wind fence yesterday, little taller than my silt fence, hopefully it'll help, though my wife won't like the color - I put it up while she was out of town :-) Thursday, June 24 View Page Here's my first female just about ready to open (this is at 6:00AM). I had a baggie over it since last night since rain was in the forecast, rained most of the night but lucky we now have a break in the action. Thursday, June 24 View Page This is a shot down the main vine of the 1378 Pitura, 11 ft out there you can see the female just about to open, I had baggies over the male flowers too. Thursday, June 24 View Page The suitors come a calling.... since this is my early plant this will be a self pollination (887 Keim is a couple days behind). Thursday, June 24 View Page Four lober with a weird little "thing" hanging near the bottom, not sure what that's all about but hopefully this fruit will pollinate (used three males - all that I had). This was at 6:55AM and the rain was just starting up again so back on with the baggie, good thing too as we had terrential down pours this afternoon. Saturday, June 26 View Page This is the 1378 Pitura at 63 days old, second pollination today, strange looking 4 segment @ 13', crossed with the 887 Keim. Note the JITW (Just In Time Weeding), I'm a firm believer. Wednesday, June 30 View Page Again the 1378, my largest (by area) plant, note the JITW is failing (ha,ha), falling behind, it's hard keeping up with five plants when you have a full time job :-) The side vines are hitting the fences and I have begun terminating them. Wednesday, June 30 View Page This is my other early plant, the 887 Keim. It too now has two pollinations on it, the first one was a nice 5 lober @ 10', the second was a 4 lober @ 10 1/2', both crossed with the Pitura. Obivously if they both take one of them will be culled, they are on opposite sides of the vine, we'll see. This plant has big leaves and a thick main vine. Buried vines over the weekend and my back paid the price :( Wednesday, June 30 View Page This is the Breznick 1170 from my second planting, it's doing very well, should have a pollination within a week on this plant. The weather has been pretty good so far, so keeping up with the vines meeting the weeds has been a real challenge (JITW). I practice this for a couple reasons, first off I just don't have the time to keep the whole patch weeded so I let them grow until the plant approaches. The weeds help to retain the moisture through they are sapping nutrients, then by pulling them up it loosens the soil again just before the pumpkin roots move in. I'm not so much into tilling as I believe this has some downsides, disturbs the worms and microbes as well as just brings up more seeds to start new weeds. My "theory" is less weeds will grow if pulled then if tilled but it's definitely more time consuming and tough on the old body parts :-) Wednesday, June 30 View Page This is Romeo (300 Keim) also growing very well. Knock on wood - I have yet to see a cucumber beetle in the patch, I can't believe. I had tons last year and battled them "hand to hand" so to speak, maybe it's the marigolds this year? I'm not complaining but I did find a dead mole in the patch, not sure what's that about, did my Merit do him in? (I hope so!) Saw another blur of fur later, so I've either got another mole or a vole around. Anyone have any suggestions on how to rid the patch of these critters? Wednesday, June 30 View Page This is the 1270 Horton, this is my smallest and slowest growing plant, got the vine growing in the correct direction now but it definitely has issues, everything is kind of "bunched" together, the secondaries aren't really growing out. Wednesday, June 30 View Page The main vine (big time ribbon) on the Horton, it's not looking good, have yet to see any tap roots coming down off the main, not good. Wednesday, June 30 View Page Horton plant again, with the ribbon vine and no tap roots the wind twisted and split the main. Not sure how much more effort to put into this plant, this could become a "feral" plant. Wednesday, June 30 View Page This is the first pollination on the Pitura at six days old - grow baby grow. Tomorrow morning there will be a third pumpkin @ 16' to pollinate on this plant, all three of the pumpkins are set on the same (north) side of the main, funny how some plants alternate and others always to one side. Thursday, July 1 View Page 24 hours ago the kids and I came up with an idea to build a pumpkin/regatta float for our town July 4th parade. Here's the start of it, expandable foam, chicken wire and newspaper with a 1x1 wooden base. Thursday, July 1 View Page Here's my #1 Pitura at one week old, it's got a lot of plant behind it so I'm hoping it'll really take off with the next few days of perdicted warm, sunny weather. Friday, July 2 View Page I was going to try to make this look authentic but my wife and kids convinced me that the majority of the crowd would not get that it was a pumpkin upside down in the water, so I made it look more like a "Fair" pumpkin, not upside down :-) Friday, July 2 View Page That's me, putting another coarse of form on, that stuff really is "great stuff". Don't tell my PT I was bending over like that :( Friday, July 2 View Page The expandable foam was just to bumpy, either had to fill it in or grind it down to smooth it out, my son suggested masking tape, great idea! Does it look like a pumpkin yet? Friday, July 2 View Page How 'bout now? With that color this must be from the 772 Poirier, lol. Friday, July 2 View Page Not to shabby for a 48 hour turn around. The plan is to pull this with the Camaro in the Williston parade tomorrow. Gonna be a lot of orange. Friday, July 2 View Page Here's Jonas and Abigail with our faceless victim.. I mean rower. :-) The Regatta is such a hoot, can't wait! My neighbors stopped in while I was painting the pumpkin in the driveway, her comment was "I think you need therapy", lol - my wife says the same thing. Sunday, July 4 View Page Happy fourth of July everyone! Here we are in the Williston parade yesterday, float came out pretty good for a 48 hour project. The kids threw candy and I threw pumpkin seeds - ha,ha - you should have seen the look on some of those kids faces when they realized that it wasn't candy, lol - oh well, some of the adults were actually asking for them. I doubt any of them will ever be planted but nothing lost they were just some of my old seeds from a 579 Whitcomb and 221 Horton that were just laying around. Sunday, July 4 View Page Finally got some sunflower heads blooming, this was are first one that just opened up a couple of days ago. Last year we had a 17" head, hoping to better that this year. Sunday, July 4 View Page Yesterday I culled my #2 Pitura, the #1 seemed to be taking off nicely and is well positioned on the vine, the #2 was a wacky, twisted 4 lober that was not positioned well. Also yesterday I pollinated #3 on Keim, a nice 5 lobe about 13 1/2 feet out, positioned well but has a short stem, we'll see, this might be my "keeper". Monday, July 5 View Page First pollination on Romeo @ ~8', 5 lobe crossed with Breznick. Monday, July 5 View Page This is the first pollination on Breznick @ ~12' (some funky lobe) crossed with Romeo. Monday, July 5 View Page These are #1 and #2 on the 887, this afternoon I tied a twisty around the #2 (the smaller one) to cull it. Neither of these are positioned very well on the vine, as soon as I'm convince that #3 is pollinated and growing I'll probably cull #1 also. Monday, July 5 View Page This is #1 on the Pitura, great vine position and looking like the stem is lengthening so I hoping this is going to be my keeper on this plant, maybe my fair pumpkin. Monday, July 5 View Page This is my Horton, maybe the last photo you'll see of it, the ribbon vine has now split into two mains, can't see it in this photo but both mains have a female almost in identical positions. Note the JITW has been lack, lol, though I did spend an hour weeding this pot, not so much for the benefit of the plant but because the weeds are starting to go to seed. Second day of +90F, my water supply is going faster. Weather man is calling for at least three more days of +90 with "maybe" a thundershower on Wednesday or Thursday. I suspect my water supply will be empty by Thursday so I'm hoping for some of that rain as I can't afford to run our well down. Thursday, July 8 View Page Today was culling day, I always hate doing it, I never want to "put all my eggs in one basket" so to speak, but I guess that's what it takes to go big. This is the #1 and #2 Keim, both had short stems and were not positioned well on the vine. The smallest one is the #3 Pitura, since the #1 is doing pretty well we're going with it. I usually let pumpkins go longer but with this heat wave I didn't want any more water expended on miscellaneous pumpkins. According to our thermometer, high of 98 today, 102 yesterday, 97 and 94 the two preceeding days - that's dam hot! especially for VT. Thursday, July 8 View Page This is the #1 Pitura at 14 days old. We really need some rain, I've pretty much used up all of my 600+ gallon supply, been rationing it out the last couple days. Suppose to rain tomorrow, hope so. Saturday, July 10 View Page Jonas enjoyed smashing pumpkins and so did the chickens :-) Finally got some rain last night, must have rained hard at some point as my big tank was 3/4 full this morning, that's good, so the plants got a good drink. The heat really took a toll on the end of my vines, several spots that are all wilted. Forgot to mention earlier that I finally saw my first cucumber beetle around the fourth of July, snagged him out of the air and quicky dispatched him, have seen only a half dozen since. But I must confess, yesterday I caught this beautiful moth, checked it out and then let it go.... I know, how stupid was that! I was thinking SVBs were a beetle so being the nature lover I let the moth go, when I checked it out last night on the internet I about had a cow, gees, after last year you'd think I would know that. Hopefully my pesticides work. Sunday, July 11 View Page Here's a shot of our tallest sunflower so far, it's about 7' tall, last year we had a 14' 2" so hoping to better that this year. You can see I still haven't caught up with the weeds, they're going to seed, ugh. Sunday, July 11 View Page Here's a shot of the patch from above our garage, I finally have gotten all the wind fence into it's final position and you can see I'm almost wall to wall plants now, that's the Breznick plant in the middle, it's huge since it sent out a second main backwards, probably should have just cut it off but I let it run 12' or so. It's a core keeping up with trimming all those vines. The plant in the left corner is the Pitura, the #1 is the only pumpkin remaining and is being covered by a patio chair and sun screen, but not for much longer. Monday, July 12 View Page Started this yesterday and finished it tonight, just in time too. In the past I simply used four grade stakes and a tarp to shade my pumpkins but I always hated pounding in those "huge" stakes, couldn't help thinking about how many roots were getting ripped apart. So I came up with this design, has long, thinner stakes and I can also put on some weight to hold it down, hopefully it'll withstand our wind. Today I pollinated #3 on Romeo, a 5 lobe @ ~14', this is probably going to be my last pollination. Here's the pumpkin count (sorry no pictures) - I have #1 growing well on the Pitura (all my eggs in one basket on this plant), two on the Keim (#3 is slowly chugging along at 13.5' and still waiting to see what #4 @ 17' will do, it's only 4 days old), have two starts on the Breznick (#1 is doing ok but #2 was a 6 lober @ 16' and only 3 days old) and have three starts on Romeo (#1 is an ugly oblong shape, about the size of a football, #2 appears to have aborted which is my first abort so far this year and then #3 which was just pollinated today). The goal is to have only one pumpkin per plant this year, so I'll have some tough decisions coming in the days ahead. Wednesday, July 14 View Page Hasn't rained in awhile and my water supply was getting low, my good neighbor Mike was nice enough to let me borrow his pump and fill up my 55 gallon drums from the stream behind his house. Transferring water into the big tank. Wednesday, July 14 View Page Yet another reason to own a tractor... But it was about all this loader could do to lift it (~880 lbs), what am I going to do to lift a 1000 pound pumpkin? Get a bigger tractor I guess. Friday, July 16 View Page I said I wasn't going to post another picture of the 1237 Horton but I had to, check this out, at the end of the ribbon vine there are three pumpkin starts within about 4 inches of one another. Good gollie, who's knows what I'll end up with on this plant. Friday, July 16 View Page Here's the pumpkin roll call. This is #3 on Romeo, only four days old, 5 lobe @ 14', crossed with Pitura. Friday, July 16 View Page This was #2 on Romeo, one of my two aborts due to the heat. Friday, July 16 View Page Here's #1 on Romeo, 11 days old, 5 lobe @ 8' crossed with 1170 Breznick. This looks like it might be my "long boat" for the Regatta. Friday, July 16 View Page Here's #2 on Breznick at 6 days old, 6 lobe @ 16' crossed with 1378 Pitura, in a good position and good distance out, I'm optimistic for this one. Friday, July 16 View Page Here's #1 on Breznick at 11 days old, had a blob so couldn't distinguish the number of lobes, @ 12' crossed with Romeo. I think this one will probably be culled in the next couple days (make sure #2 is good to go first). It's growing fairly well but the vine location is not great, has a short stem and the shoulders are already rubbing the side vine (I don't like to cut side vines until I know for sure I'm keeping a pumpkin, typically I just move the vine or pumpkin away from one another). Friday, July 16 View Page Here's #3 on the 887 Keim, 13 days old, 5 lobe @ 13 1/2 ft crossed with Pitura. This is going to be my keeper, the #4 aborted due to heat. As you can see I also built a second "pumpkin house", I like these, no more figthing to get under a tarp, easy access. Friday, July 16 View Page Here's #1 on the Pitura at 22 days old, a 4 lobe @ 11', self pollinated. This pumpkin has been putting on inches a day, it's in a good location and has a pretty decent stem, lifting the vine off the ground five inches already. This is definitely my keeper and I can only hope it keeps growing like it has over the past week. Saturday, July 17 View Page This is me feeling not so good about culling the #1 Breznick. It was a pretty pumpkin but had such a short stem and not positioned very well. Sunday, July 18 View Page All seemed to be going so well in the patch until this morning.... this is #2 Breznick, stem split, darn it, I probably caused it by culling the #1 yesterday. I should have strangled it for a couple days and then cut it off. We had some rain last night which probably didn't help either, rapid growth. So far the crack is not into the pumpkin it's self, I packed it full of Captan and have my fingers crossed. Tuesday, July 27 View Page Went on vacation for a week, drove to see family in Indiana but stopped at Niagara Falls (half way point) overnight. This was our view from the 50th floor of the Hilton, pretty sweet (suite), overlooking the Casino next door and the Horseshoes Falls. Great place to visit but can't afford to stay very long... Tuesday, July 27 View Page Got back last night and after seeing the garden and patch decided I needed another day vacation to catch up with everything, way out of control. Been gone for a week, got good news and bad news. Tuesday, July 27 View Page Bad news, the stump on the 887 Keim is weeping! Ugh, same thing happened last year to this plant's parent, the 1289 Breznick, but it didn't start weeping until near the end of August, could never get it to stop either. This plant is not looking good, many dried up and wind beaten leaves. Tuesday, July 27 View Page And to boot the 887 Keim plant has powder mildew! I had been spraying milk and baking soda for it before I left but it's definitely set in on this plant. Drats! Tuesday, July 27 View Page More bad news, the #3 on Romeo aborted. I was hoping this one would make it as it had a good location and a long stem. Tuesday, July 27 View Page Lost a couple sunflowers, due to rot and wind but the remaining ones are getting up there, hopefully they can survive. Tuesday, July 27 View Page Now for some good news. The stem on the #2 Breznick appears to be holding so far, though it is a shorty. OTT estimates this pumpkin at 76 lbs. Tuesday, July 27 View Page This is a new pumpkin on Breznick (#3), I pollinated it the morning we left on vacation (7/20) in case the stem on #2 doesn't hold up. It was a five lobe crossed with 887 Keim, if #2 continues to hold up I'll probably cull this one. Tuesday, July 27 View Page This is #1 on Romeo, my long boat, which my daugther has named "Edward". This plant throws pumpkins with long stems (I culled two that appeared to be pollinated while we were gone, they were both up against the fence) though this one isn't situated the best. OTT estimates 140 lbs. Tuesday, July 27 View Page This is #3 on 887 Keim, decent growth while we were gone but I doubt the plant has enough to turn this in to a "big" pumpkin. This pumpkin has been named "Earl" (after my brother). OTT estimates 169 lbs. Maybe this will become my Fair pumpkin as the plant may be out of gas by then anyway. Tuesday, July 27 View Page And here's the big boy in the patch, the #1 Pitura, named "Esteban" - this is my fifth year growing so all the pumpkins have to have names that start with "E". By OTT estimates it gained 170 pounds while we were gone last week, nice - that's just over 24 pounds a day! I only hope that it can keep that up. Tuesday, July 27 View Page Here's the carnage after vine trimming. It amazes me that you can trim some vines and they just stop growing, others sprout in various directions and grow like there's no tomorrow. I cut off some really thick vines. Now I can spray again and not waste product on the run aways. Saturday, July 31 View Page Not good, the weeping stump has turned into a split and rotting stump. Need to get some advice from my VGVGA buddies but I'm guessing it's time for major surgery. :-( Saturday, July 31 View Page Another angle, reached under to feel the main and found a large rotting hole where the second secondary met the main. Ugh. Sunday, August 1 View Page Well it had to be done, so today I severed the main from the stump and packed the main full of captan. Hopefully I got all the rot out and it won't travel any further down the main. Sunday, August 1 View Page Here's the piece that was removed, you can see the underside was pretty much gone. This was right above where the drip hose was, wonder if that is what caused this? Sunday, August 1 View Page Since the first set of secondaries are no longer attached to the main and half of them already had powder mildew anyway I decided to just go ahead and remove them too. No use wasting water and nutrients on vines that aren't attached to pumpkins, bummer. Sunday, August 1 View Page Here's the run down on pumpkins. This is Earl (formerly #3 on 887 Keim), his stump was severed today. He's been a slow but steady grower, hopefully he'll stay that way. Decent shape. Currently measuring 66x69x101=236 OTT ~ 286 lbs. (My OTT listed measurements are always side-to-side x stem-to-blossom x circumference) Sunday, August 1 View Page This is Eva (formerly known as #2 on Breznick), this one had the split stem but seems to be healed up now, though the pumpkin is growing right up and over the vine, not good, hopefully it won't strap it's self. It is my youngest pumpkin at 22 days old, 58x58x84=201 OTT ~ 181 lbs. Hopefully this girl will pick it up, she has the largest plant in the patch, hope she puts it to good use. Forgot to mention on previous photo that Earl is 29 days old. Sunday, August 1 View Page This is Edward (formerly known as #1 on 300 Keim, a.k.a Romeo) at 27 days old. I have never seen such a flat pumpkin in my life, this seed loves to throw long boat shaped pumpkins. Measures 48x60x100=208 OTT ~ 200 lbs, still have a long way to go to get this into the water, slow grower. Sunday, August 1 View Page This is Esteban (formerly known as #1 on Pitura) at 38 days old, this is my oldest pumpkin in the patch and is a steady 1 pound per hour grower - it has averaged 24 pounds a day for the last three weeks. That's not gang busters growth but I'll take it any day, they say slow and steady wins the race, I hope it can maintain that pace through out August. I weeded this entire plant today, mainly in order to get a better look at the entire main and stump as well as help with ventilation and watering. Much to my relief everything looked solid. Measures 82x83x125=290 OTT ~ 518 lbs. This is by far the largest pumpkin I've ever had on August 1, not counting my chickens yet but I like my chances for 1K. Sunday, August 1 View Page Here's a nice surprise, just for grins I went over to check out the 1237 Horton plant, finally the main has cleared up into a normal looking plant and has this nice shaped little guy on it. Was open pollinated sometime while we were gone, probably about 12-13 ft out, so I put fabric and sand under it and covered it, maybe I'll get something off of this plant after all :-). Sunday, August 1 View Page Horton plant also had this pumpkin buried inside a mass of vines, much shorter stem than the other one and no where for it to grow. Had battle scars all over it. So I put a twisty tie around the stem to strangle it off from the vine, give the main one a chance. Wednesday, August 4 View Page Tons of rain last night, filled two 55 gallon drums from the downsprout in less than 15 minutes, it was really pouring, coming out like a fire hose. So need less to say all my tanks are once again full. Cutting off the weeping main on the 887 Keim appears to have been a good move, since doing that (Sunday morning) Earl has gained ~87 lbs, that's 29 pounds a day, I'll take that, thank you very much. With all the rain Esteban put on ~33 pounds in a 24 hour period (just don't grow too fast ...). Sunday, August 8 View Page Shot of our sunflowers, about all of them already have flowers on them so I don't expect any real tall ones this year. The birds have been raiding the seeds on the largest heads, almost picked clean already. Sunday, August 8 View Page This is Edward, slow growing, only put on ~118 lbs this week. I have another start on this plant now that I'm going to let go for a couple weeks and see how it goes, just recently occurred to me that with only one pumpkin per plant I may not have a decent pumpkin to carve for the weigh-off/Regatta. Sunday, August 8 View Page Sorry about that last photo being side ways, it was rotated in my photo browser, not sure how to do that here. Anyway this is Eva Breznick, picking up the pace a bit this week with a ~205 lb gain, not great but I'll take it. Sunday, August 8 View Page This is a stem shot of Eva, she's growing right on top of her main vine, ugh. I tried moving her early on but it was to no avail, her stem is so short, but at least the split has healed up nicely. Not sure how long she can go in this position but I don't see any good options so I'll just let her go and see what we end up with. Sunday, August 8 View Page This is J-man posing with Earl, the fastest growing pumpkin in the patch (a ~206 gain this week), if I would have known removing the weeping stump would have produced this kind of growth I would have done it a week sooner. It now tapes just under 500 lbs. Sunday, August 8 View Page And here's Esteban Pitura, still the patch leader with a modest ~160 gain this week, but I'll take that any and every week. Has some nice ribs developing and looks like it's going orange already, I like orange. Keep 'em growing fellas (and gals), sorry to hear about your hail storm Randy, that's a bummer, we've been lucky enough to avoid them so far this year (knock on wood). Thursday, August 12 View Page Esteban is seven weeks old today and it appears that maybe he's running out of steam, or it may just be measurement issues as he's so large now with the ribs that it's difficult to get an accurate circumfernce measurement by myself (it's hard getting around 12 ft). I'm hoping it's the later as I don't see any apparent issues, current OTT is 93x93x143 = 329 (~749 lbs - but I always say, "it don't weigh nothing until it's on the scale" - we got a long way to go yet). Saturday, August 14 View Page Today was our club's (VGVGA) patch tour and BBQ, here are the stats of my pumpkins as our patch was included on the tour. It was really great seeing everyone and oogling over some nice pumpkins. Good food and a great setting at the Squires, I'll post bunches of photos on our club's website (http;//vermontgiants.tripod.com). One good thing about having folks come to my patch, I got free first hand advice and Kevin helped me tape Esteban again. Taping these big ones is so much easier with two people, we got a better measurement, circ was 148 instead of 145 as I had listed, that's another 20 lbs! So now I don't feeling so bad about last week's growth since it didn't slow down as much as I had thought (taper error). Monday, August 16 View Page Over the last month or so I've been struggling with what to do with which pumpkin. Originally I was thinking of taking Esteban (my largest) to the Fair but the goal this year is to beat 1000 pounds, todays estimate for Esteban is 833 and still growing, putting on 15-20 a day still. So can't really cut him off early. Next largest pumpkin is Earl, today's estimate is 710 and he's still growing 20+ lbs a day and it's looking like a great boat so I can't cut him early. That brings me to my third pumpkin, Eva - pictured here, currently estimated at 600 lbs and putting on 25-30 lbs a day, it's on my largest plant so maybe it'll go 1000? What to do? I could take my fourth pumpkin, Edward estimated at 386 today and putting on just 10-15 lbs, maybe he should go? Definitely my slow grower, but I had plans for him to either be my boat (if he got big enough - probably not) or my carving pumpkin as I have a design in mind that requires a long pumpkin. I guess it's a good problem to have, it's going to be a tough call and probably won't make it until the last possible day. Thursday, August 19 View Page These are the leaves on the 887 Keim plant (Earl pumpkin). Looking at these leaves I don't know how the pumpkin continues to put on the pounds but I'm not complaining. You can see I haven't cut off the new growth lately and probably won't, hoping it'll kind of replace the old, brittle leaves. I have sprayed a milk/baking soda solution every week since mid July (which is earlier then usual due to the warm humid weather early on) but PM has definitely taken over this plant, all the plants have it to some extent now. Last year I used this same solution and it seemed to prevent the PM, I didn't get it much at all last year and then very late. Only difference was last year I sprayed on the Fish/Seaweed, this year I drench with it, maybe that's the difference? Or it's just the delta in weather. Thursday, August 19 View Page Haven't had any significant rain in awhile now, it's been too time consuming running down to Mike's to fill up my 55 gallon tanks so I installed this 1500 gallon tank. I've had it for awhile (got it for FREE!) but hadn't hooked it up cause it had some holes in it and the wife didn't want to see it (it stands 9 feet tall) and I didn't want to bury it. So we comprised and laid it down on an angle, so it probably still holds 1000-1100 gallons. The water truck arrived this morning and filled up both tanks, I should be all set on water for awhile. Thursday, August 19 View Page This is a picture of my neighbor Bill's patch, you can see at least four kins just in this shot that are in the 80-120 lb range. I put in two plants back in May and neither he or I have really done much of anything with them, he mulched with grass clippings. The plants were my '07 300 lb and '09 851 lb and they are throwing out pumpkins right and left, I did go over there a couple weeks ago and cull probably 20-30 pumpkins but he still has 10-15 good looking pumpkins on there, not really sure how many, he has a bunch of co-workers that come and get them which is why he has so many. But the plants look real healthy, no sign of PM or cuke beetles. I'm thinking all this spraying I'm doing is causing more harm than good. Thursday, August 19 View Page Here's another shot of Bill's patch, I wish I had taken the VGVGA folks over there for the patch tour too. No giant monsters to see but they could see what "all natural" looks like. You can see he has no wind or critter fence so he has some vines blowing around as he doesn't bury them. These are all open pollinations but you can tell which pumpkins are on which plant by their shape, the 300 Keim grows torpedos which will turn a bright orange. I haven't grown the 851 Keim before so we'll see whether it's orange or not, it's a cross between the 300 Keim and 1289 Breznick and they look to be much rounder. Time will tell. Friday, August 20 View Page Pumpkin update. This is Edward, 46 days old, put on ~58 lbs in the last 6 days, pretty dismal, tapes at 69x76x130=275 (444 lbs). Don't think it's going to reach "boat size" so most likely this will end up being my carving pumpkin or maybe this will go to the Fair. Friday, August 20 View Page This is Eva Breznick, the youngster in the patch at 41 days old, put on ~133 lbs in the last six days but she's been tapering off with every measurement. I measure every two days sat/sun she put on 61 lbs, mon/tue 47 lbs, wed/thur only 25 lbs. Not surprised by this, I figured there would come a time when the weight would "pinch off" the vine, I think that time is coming. Her OTT is 89x84.5x143.5 = 317 (672 lbs). Fair is a week away, we'll she where she's at by then, if she puts on another 130+ lbs maybe I'll just have to leave her on and take Edward. Friday, August 20 View Page This is Earl at 46 days old, turning a nice color, despite the PM and the poor shape of the leaves this pumpkin was the big grower for the week (I don't know how). Put on ~173 lbs in the last six days, current OTT is 94x96x150 = 340 (826 lbs), this looks like a nice boat, maybe I should take it to the Fair so it doesn't get too big for a boat - ha,ha - I don't think so. Friday, August 20 View Page And still the patch leader (for now), the old man Esteban Pitura at 57 days old. This one gets harder every time to measure, trying to be consistent but it's difficult, can't wait to actually get it on a scale. Tapes at (best estimate) 98x96.5x155 = 349.5 (896 lbs) : which would be a personal best but 1000 is the goal. Last year both my pumpkins taped in the 900s but they weighed in at 851 and 887, so I'm not going to breathe easy until this thing tapes more than 1200 lbs (I hope it gets there). Saturday, August 21 View Page Woke up this morning to the horror of STEM SPLIT! This is on Earl, still my fastest growing pumpkin. Thank goodness that upon closer inspection the holes do not penetrate into the cavity. We'll going on vacation today so quick surgery was required, slit the stem up towards the vine and applied generous amount of Captan. Friday, August 27 View Page Rushed home from Rye Beach, NH to get some things to the Champlain Valley Fair - sunflowers for the tallest and widest head, longest carrot, heaviest onion, heaviest tomato and of course a pumpkin. Been struggling all week on which one to pick, as of this morning Earl grew ~160 lbs in the last week (tapes 986 - now the biggest pumpkin in the patch), Eva grew ~148 (tapes 820) and Esteban only grew ~58 lbs (tapes 954). Good news is that they are all still growing, I kind of want to take Esteban but I don't think my tractor will pick him up. Because I don't have the time to borrow another tractor or get our backhoe running I think I'm going to be forced to take Eva even though she is the youngest one and still growing well. I hate to do it but I want to take a respectable pumpkin to the fair and I don't want to cut one that's going to weigh-in at 950 lbs, cause I'd just cry if it weighed 999 lbs! Friday, August 27 View Page Here's me with Eva, she went heavy, weighed in at 898 lbs! Not too shabby for a pumpkin that was only 48 days old. She took third place behind Wilbur Horton's 1007 lb and Kevin Companion's 1246 lb, probably didn't matter which pumpkin I brought, most likely would have still gotten third. Good turn out of pumpkins for the fair, Glenn Story took fourth with 513, Eric Hull fifth with 512 and Sarah Rainville (new grower) was sixth with 365. It was fun, hopefully I'll still be married when I get back to Rye. Tuesday, August 31 View Page Eva left a big hole in the patch, funny, when I went to shut off the water to this plant I found a pumpkin that I didn't even know was there. About a beach ball size, we'll let it go and see what it does though it won't get any water since I'm down to nothing again. Tuesday, August 31 View Page This is Esteban, now tapes at 102x99x159 = 360 OTT (978 lbs) but I think it's a little misleading because it's definitely "filling out" more but not necessarily pushing the numbers up, that's ok, as long as it's still growing. Tuesday, August 31 View Page This is Earl, the new patch leader, tapes at 102x100x164 = 366 OTT (1027 lbs) - whu whoo - never had one tape that big before, 1K before Sept 1? Maybe, but as I always say - "it don't weigh nothing until it's on the scale". The top area of the stem split looks pretty good but the bottom section continues to seep a bit, so this morning I put a fan on it, see if that will help dry it out. Monday, September 6 View Page This is Edward, I haven't had a picture of him in awhile. I was hoping he would be my longboat though I don't think he's going to make. He may be my craver pumpkin instead, OTT measurements today were 73x80x137 = 290 (518 lbs). My other two big ones tape 1014 and 1046, growth rate has reduced drastically, only 17 and 11 pounds respectively over the last 4 days. I don't think I'll tape them anymore because it's so subjective as to where you place the tape with the way the ribs are now, and it's kind of depressing to only "gain" 11 pounds in four days when we were doing 20+ pounds a day three weeks ago. As long as I don't see any "weeping" or "oozing" I'm happy. Monday, September 6 View Page After I cut off my Fair pumpkin (Eva) on the Breznick plant I also shut of the water to that plant, in order to save the water for the other plants still growing pumpkins. At that time I noticed a basketball size pumpkin had started near the stump, which I didn't know was there. Well now it is much bigger than that, it looks just like it's sister, growing on top of the vine. Looking around in the mist of jungle of this plant (since I haven't trimmed it since early August) I found another three basketball size pumpkins growing. I'm just going to let 'em go at this point, maybe they'll orange up enough to be jack-o-laterns. Monday, September 6 View Page Here's the Horton plant that I abandoned long ago, the plant is about done for but it did produced a couple decent pumpkins. The one in the foreground is Eyore which tapes at 162, the one in the back is Ernest which tapes at 439. I think these two will be used in one of the Regatta displays sponsored by the New England Federal Credit Union. Monday, September 6 View Page Here's my float being displayed at the Champlain Valley Fair. I worked at the fair a couple of nights and heard more than one person say "I know where I'm going to be Oct 10th". I think we're going to have a big crowd this year. :-) Monday, September 6 View Page Here's a picture of my pumpkin at the fair with it's ribbon. We also took first place for widest sunflower head (16.5 in), first place for heaviest onion (1 lb 3 oz -that was a surprise), second place for tallest sunflower (12 ft 6 in), and third place for the heaviest tomato (1 lb 7 oz - also a surprise). Neither the tomato or the onion where anything I had planned, just grabbed them because they were there. I had a zucchini that I intended to enter until I saw the competition, then I didn't even bother, threw that back in the truck pretty quick, ha,ha. The fair is over now, HAPPY LABOR DAY everyone! Thursday, September 9 View Page Noticed yesterday that the stem on Earl was slightly discolored and a bit soft. Not sure if I want to operate or not. Thursday, September 9 View Page Decided it's better to try to nip it before it gets worse, scraped down the area and lucky it wasn't very deep so hopefully it will heal over. Covered it with Captan after surgery. The original part of this plant is about shot, the leaves are dried and brittle, hopefully the new growth will still add some pounds but I'm not very optimistic at this point. Looking back at last year's records my two largest fruit put on over 200 pounds in September. I don't think that'll happen this year, the plants and fruit this year are older since I started them earlier and they're also bigger, so maybe they are about tapped out. At this point any September gain would be great, I just don't want anything to rot, ooze, weep or collapse before the weigh-off. Saturday, September 11 View Page As Randy would say, my pumpkin Earl is officially on "life support". Now two fans on the stem, both top and bottom. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, it scraped away pretty easily and wasn't very deep, just hope that curtails it. Saturday, September 11 View Page Since I was in there anyway decided to tape Earl again, measures 102x102x168 = 372 OTT (~1078 lbs) at 70 days old which means it's still growing! Yeah, put on ~32 pounds in 5 days, that's ok. So I had to tape Esteban too, he measures 103x101x163 = 367 OTT (~1035 lbs) at 79 days old, he put on additional ~21 pounds in 5 five days. I'll take that, keep on chugging boys. Saturday, September 11 View Page He's my friend/neighbor Bill, he stopped in with his 1910 Sears - yes Sears, as in Sears and Roebuck. Back then you could order this car though their catalog, it was shipped via train and came in a crate, you would have to attach the wheels yourself. Pretty cool, as you can see it's all original. It's chain driven by a two cylinder, top speed, maybe 20 mph, no steering wheel just a rudder (it was a cheap car intended for the everyday Joe, or Bill as the case may be). Sunday, September 12 View Page Tomorrow morning I'm delivering some stuff downtown Burlington to Church Street. The Credit Union is decorating an empty store front to promote the Regatta. Taking down three smaller pumpkins, the real orange one is my Eyore (tapes ~181 but it feels a lot heavier than that) which is off the Horton plant, the one in the background is from Bill's patch grown off of my 300 Romeo, it tapes ~153 and then there's that little one also from Bill's, not sure whether we'll use that or not. Also have three bales of hay, a couple sunflower stalks and a bunch of corn stalks. That should make for a decent display. Wednesday, September 15 View Page We had a double rainbow tonight, not the first time but it was a nice one. We didn't "freak out" like the guy in the youtube video (ha, ha) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMRosQNhYo Friday, September 17 View Page Checked on the stem again today, not good. Some yellow bubbly stuff on there and stem was soft and discolored in a couple places. The worse part was I noticed fruit flies flying around, that is not a good sign. But I didn't smell any nasty odor and I did a little probing with a straw, the pumpkin itself appears to be sound. Gees, I hope so. I scraped everything off again, redirected the fans and applied more captan. Friday, September 17 View Page Here's another shot of Earl, it's got a really nice color, so orange that it's almost red. I like it! You can see the blankets there too, I've been covering them at night and turning off the fans during the night. I think from now on the fans remain on 24x7 and when I cover them I just leave the stem area exposed. Saturday, September 18 View Page This is a shot of Esteban all tucked into his little hut. It takes three blankets to cover the entire pumpkin. Last night was our coldest night yet, 40F and a heavy dew this morning. I'm sure my friends in the hills were near freezing last night. I almost wish our weigh-off was next week-end but it's still three weeks away, once the frost hits there's not much hope for more growth, then it's just trying to keep everything from rotting. Saturday, September 18 View Page Turned out to be a nice day today, high of 69F and lots of sun. Here's a shot of little Elanore, she's the second pumpkin on my 300 Keim plant, was an open pollination while we were on vacation, she tapes about 325 lbs. I uncovered her today to let her get some sun so maybe she'll orange up a bit, I hope she'll make a nice carver. Saturday, September 18 View Page Here's Jonas and I lifting Ernest out of the patch, this was the first pumpkin on the 1237 Horton plant and now the last. Monday morning it will be heading down to Church Street to join it's brother for another Regatta display. Ernest tapes about 472 lbs, so hopefully we'll have enough hands to wrestle this thing into the storefront window. Jonas loves cutting off the pumpkins, and then of course he goes crazy on hacking down the leaves. Saturday, September 25 View Page Found this pumpkin on the Breznick plant today, didn't even know it was there. Unfortunately the bottom is soft and it's gone, too bad as it was nice shaped. Saturday, September 25 View Page Jonas is always willing to "take out" any "defective" pumpkins, he loves smashing pumpkins and I don't mean the rock group. So we decided to take a tour of the neighborhood. Saturday, September 25 View Page This is my neighbor Paul's biggest pumpkin, tapes at 430 lbs, decent looking pumpkin. This one is intended to go to the Whitcomb weigh-off. He has a couple/three more that are 300-350. I put two of my plants (851 Keim '09) in his patch and he doesn't do anything to them except water the heck out of them.... Saturday, September 25 View Page Too much water leads to a lot of pumpkins that end up like this. He probably has at least six or seven piles that look like this. Saturday, September 25 View Page This is my neighbor Bill's patch, I put two plants in here too (300 Keim '07 and 851 Keim '09) and we get what ever we get. He has 17 pumpkins that measure over 200 pounds, the largest three tape at 386, 381 and 369 - one of these will go to the Whitcomb weigh-off and he'll probably enter another at our VGVGA weigh-off. Pretty nice crop though, his co-workers and friends really enjoy coming and taking a big one home for Halloween :-) Saturday, September 25 View Page Here's another shot of Bill's. The two "longish" orange pumpkins in the back are obviously from the 300 Keim '09 nicknamed "Romeo", it is the same seed I'm growing in my patch "Edward Longboat" and "Elanore". Wednesday, September 29 View Page Finally got downtown to check out the displays that the Credit Union put together, good thing too as the little yellow pumpkin in the bottom left corner had started to turn, so I got that thing out of there before it became a mess. Wednesday, September 29 View Page Here's one of Erskine's pumpkins. Wednesday, September 29 View Page Here's the ~450 pounder, thanks to my poker buddies at Nanya who came down and helped haul it in. Unfortunately this building has been under renovation for some time, you can see the boom just above the window, some guy was painting. So you really can't get to close to the window as it is all roped off. We had our last Regatta meeting this morning, things are coming together, I guess we're going to go forward with renting a skid steer - as my friend Dan said - "You can take a pumpkin to the water but you can't make it jump in" - so true. Wednesday, September 29 View Page Heavy rains on the way so decided to get some pumpkins out of the patch while I still could. The leftmost pumpkin is my old fair pumpkin, the middle one is Edward Longboat (which will end up being my carving pumpkin for VGVGA weekend - taped something like 530 lb) and the one on the right is just a feral pumpkin that came about on my fair plant (1170 Breznick) once the big one was picked. Wednesday, September 29 View Page Here's another feral pumpkin from the 1170 Breznick, check out that stem split - figured I'd better get it out before it floats (my patch does not drain well - clay based). Friday, October 1 View Page Kind of a last minute deal, got the ok from my wife, took the day off, lined up the neighbors to pick up kids after school and I hitched a ride with Kevin Companion down to Topsfield Fair. Four hour ride, not great for my back but it was fun. Considered hauling one of my pumpkins down but figured with the rain it would be a nightmare getting it out, plus I'd rather place 5th next weekend in Vermont then 35th in Topsfield. This is a shot of an early "camper" they had at the Fair. Friday, October 1 View Page Steve Connolly took top honors with a 1674.5 pound giant grown from the 1725 Harp. At the time this was the largest GPC pumpkin weighed in for 2010. I took a bunch more photos, if you want to see more check out http://vermontgiants.tripod.com/topsfield_2010/ Friday, October 1 View Page Met some great people at Topsfield as well as got to see "TONS" of awesome pumpkins. This is Bill and Dawn Northrup from New Brunswick, Canada - that was a 9 hr ride, wow. I tried buying a Northrup seed a couple years ago on our VGVGA seed auction but couldn't afford it :-) so it was nice to meet them. Sunday, October 3 View Page Was 39F this morning and this is what the patch looks like, ouch. All that rain we had Thursday night and Friday must have been so heavy it basically wiped out all the old leaves, looks like they were hit by hail. They are so brittle anyway doesn't take much for them to crumble. I doubt there's much of any growing going on. Sunday, October 3 View Page Also noticed today that the main vine to Earl was looking a bit soaked and discolored so straped it a bit and applied Captan. One good thing though, the fans on 24x7 have pretty much dried up the stem, so hopefully this thing can hang on for another six days! If it goes DMG I have Esteban as a back up, which is another reason I didn't take anything to Topsfield. Getting them out of this water logged patch is going to be a chore. Wednesday, October 6 View Page More rain today, expected to last all night. Man I can't wait to get my pumpkins out of the patch, maybe they're floating by now :-) Charging up my battery for the backhoe tonight as I think I'll need it to lift the boys out, don't think I can drive in and get them, well maybe drive in but won't be able to drive out. Typically I wait until the morning of weigh-off to cut the cord, but I'm thinking I may have to pick one Friday and one Saturday morning so it's not so rushed. Not really sure how bad it's going to be so I don't want to wait for the last minute. Planning on taking Friday off, first I'll do my carving and load up my neighbors pumpkins to get them over to Whitcombs for their Sunday weigh-off, then we'll see about tackling my own. Friday, October 8 View Page Well it's the day before weigh-off, so much to do. I'm always anxious, even more so this year. Woke up at 3:00AM, couldn't get back to sleep, so finally gave up and got up just before 4:00AM - the stars were amazing though. Friday, October 8 View Page Frist order of business was for Abigail to weigh the pumpkins to decide which one was heavier. She couldn't tell.... they felt as light as air. Friday, October 8 View Page So I had to try. Ugh, I couldn't tell either. Friday, October 8 View Page Here's a cute little bug sculpture I put together really guick before I had to disassemble the pumpkins, as the thorax is going to be my carving pumpkin for the weekend festivies. Friday, October 8 View Page Today I also have to deliver my two neighbors pumpkins to Whitcombs for their weigh-off on Sunday. This is my neighbor Paul's pumpkin, it tapes about 430 lb, which came from my 851 Keim '09, unfortunately it might be enough to win. Friday, October 8 View Page This is the stem on Paul's pumpkin, he doesn't have a lot of patience so he didn't wait for me to come with my strap, he just used his forks and dug under the pumpkin, didn't bother to cut it off first.... geees. Friday, October 8 View Page This is Paul in his tractor (I had to ask him to help since my tractor isn't big enough to pick up the boys) but I told him before he entered my patch - "don't rush it, you drop one of these babies and you're in big dew, I'll show you how you're suppose to take a pumpkin out, slow and easy". Friday, October 8 View Page Last shot of the boys in their natural environment. :-) Friday, October 8 View Page Esteban was the first one out, had a bit of a sinkage issue but we got 'em out. Friday, October 8 View Page Then came Earl, I think the tractor had a work a bit harder to get him out. Looking good! Friday, October 8 View Page The boys safety on the trailer - whew! Normally I'd wait until Saturday morning to haul them out but Paul was available and the forecast was for more rain tonight, so I'm glad their out. I'll have to strap them down in the morning. Still have a ton of things to do tomorrow morning but I got the biggest ones done today. :-) Saturday, October 9 View Page We had quite the line up at our VGVGA weigh-off, the second pumpkin in is Mark Breznick's, mine boys are the third and fourth ones in. Mark took second place with 1191 lb. and also the Howard Dill Award. Saturday, October 9 View Page This is Earl, he taped bigger than Esteban and was a whole lot prettier (thought he had a shot at the Howard Dill Award) so I entered him instead of Esteban, even though I had a feeling Esteban weighed more. Breznick's thumping technic said Esteban was heavier too, Mark's was correct last year between Demetry (851 lb) and Dufus (887 lb) .... and he was right again this year. Saturday, October 9 View Page Here's the carver I put together for photo opts, I was rushing to get it done in the morning, which I regret. I could have done a much better job if I had carved away the background and left the pumpkin as the monster, could have put in a lot more detail, I realized this about 10 minutes into it but then it was too late. Live and learn. Saturday, October 9 View Page Esteban taped 374 OTT for ~1095 so went 6% heavy. This was a great pumpkin, both the plant and pumpkin were solid growers and didn't take a lot of extra work. This was grown from the 1378 Pitura, Mike Strange had this seed and was nice enough to give it to me, so I'll most likely grow it again. Saturday, October 9 View Page And then came Earl the Handsome, he taped 380 OTT for ~1148 but as expected went 2% light, but good enough for 3rd place, Breznick took second with 1191. I'm happy with that, it was a great year, two 1000+ pounders :-) Saturday, October 9 View Page And of course the "King of Pumpkins" Kevin Companion took first place again. This was a personal best for Kevin, he had a great year too, 1246.5 at the Fair, 1187 at Topsfield and now 1378 (second largest VT grown pumpkin), not too shabby. I took a lot more photos of the weigh-off, if you want to see more go to http://vermontgiants.tripod.com/wo_2010/ Sunday, October 10 View Page Sunday was our Regatta, what a hoot! Great weather. I was so busy that I didn't get one single photo but here's one from the Burlington Free Press, just so happens that it was my 1158 and man what a barge (the S.S. Minnow) it was. Poor little Sarah had quite the time with it. Shannon Breznick and I rowed it together in the growers race, that was a first, two people in the same pumpkin, and we were still way above the water (we should have brought some wine for the occasion). That would have been funny, break out a couple wine glasses while floating around out there. It was a great time but we got last place, our only goal was to stay dry and have fun - mission accomplished. If you want to see more photos from some club members check out http://vermontgiants.tripod.com/regatta_2010/ Monday, October 11 View Page Took Monday off because it was our 24th wedding anniversay - plus because I was pooped and still had a ton of things to do, like retrieve seeds from the 1158. Monday, October 11 View Page I'm a little disappointed in the amount of seeds, I haven't counted them yet but it doesn't look like more than 200 - 220. Monday, October 11 View Page So most wifes would drag their husband's off on a shopping spree or something on their anniversary, which is what I was expecting, figured we'd go antiqueing or leaf peeping, nope not us. My wife wanted to work on the stone walls and put the garden gate back in place, so that's what we did :-) I guess I can rest when I'm dead :-) Wednesday, October 13 View Page Finally got a free night to catch up on the diary. Here's the 1126 Keim proudly displayed in our front yard, I hope it has more seeds than the 1158 did, you know funny thing about seeds, the 1126 came from my 887 from last year. The 887 was cream color and was the ugliest pumpkin I have ever grown but that seed produced the brightest orange I've ever had, it's like beauty from the beast. I didn't include any of my 887 seeds in the VGVGA seed swap last year cause the pumpkin was so ugly I figured no one would grow it, but I liked the cross (1289 Breznick x 1311 Companion) which is why I grew it - man am I glad I did. And would you believe it grew without a stump from August 1 on. This is an all Vermont pumpkin. Friday, October 15 View Page Shannon Breznick and I take on the 1158 Keim. Got this photo from Sarah (from NEFCU), we were in no hurry, just out for a leisurely paddle. It was a blast. I tried carving out a piece of the pumpkin and mounted it to the front, kind of like the figurehead on the old sailing ships. Saturday, October 16 View Page Check this out, this is a Kalrobi (believe it or not). This is the first year we've ever grown Kalrobi, you're supposed to eat them when they are baseball/softball size but a couple got away from me so I just let them go. Wanted to see how big they would get, I was intending to take this to our weigh-off but was so excited about pumpkins that it totally slipped my mind until today when I started taking apart the garden. Saturday, October 16 View Page Also found this huge beet, garden kind of got away from me :-) I'm going to have to weigh these things just to see. Sunday, October 17 View Page Also got in to taking apart the patch, gees you forget how much "stuff" you have down there until it's time to pick it all up. Fence and posts, windfences, grow mats, hoses, timers, electric cords and lots of boards! Sunday, October 17 View Page Kinda sad to see it go, but it was a good year. Glad our weigh-off was last weekend and not this weekend. Rained all day Friday so you can see standing water in the patch, would have made it pretty tough hauling out pumpkins, maybe I could have "floated" them out :-) Sunday, October 17 View Page My neighbor Bill had a scale so I had to weigh these big guys, 18 pound Kalrobi - is that a State record? Sunday, October 17 View Page The beet went 5.5 pounds, it's the largest beet I've ever seen. Pretty funny. Saturday, October 23 View Page Time to put the patch to bed. Got this load of horse manure from Mike at Windswept (thanks Mike!), he certainly loaded it to the top. Patch was actually drier than I had expected, put in this load, along with a load of cow manure from Boutins (thanks Gary!) and a pickup truck load of leaves and grass clippings from Erskines (thanks Bill and Abigail!). Saturday, October 23 View Page It was a beautiful day, sunny all day, high 50's, great color left on the trees, with snow on the mountains, then the full moon rose up out of the mountains, it was a great ending for a long day. Got the patch tilled before it turned dark, had to get it done today as rain is in the forecast for the whole next week. Saturday, October 23 View Page Dug up these taters before I tilled the patch, pretty decent crop, Cathy cooked some up for dinner, yummy. Yesterday morning we got our first hard frost, probaby a week or two later than normal. Sunday, October 24 View Page The family and I spent the afternoon at the Squires, we went to help them carve 600+ pumpkins for their Halloween display, this year's theme is Alice in Wonderland. The kids and Cathy each carved five pumpkins but I only did one :-) I wasn't expecting to carve a giant but Ann was nice enough to offer so I couldn't pass that up. It was fun and didn't come out too bad, the Mad Hatter of course, my personal favorite from that story. Sunday, October 24 View Page My little buddy was right in there helping me scoop. Thing about carving giants is to get the walls thin enough (from the back) so that the light actually shines though. Dick has a large quartz light that they'll use, hopefully it'll show though. Friday, October 29 View Page I noticed a few days ago that the 1126 appeared to be sinking into the ground. I've been meaning to re-situate this pumpkin since it came home since it was hanging off the back of the pallet. Friday, October 29 View Page Well upon further inspection, the pallet's not sinking, the pumpkin has cracked and sunken down around it! Man, lesson learned, get a bigger pallet and after the weigh-off if the pumpkin is not well situated rearrange it right away. So much for moving it now, I guess it is where it is. Friday, October 29 View Page I have been working on building a new chicken coop (taking way longer than I thought) for the two month old birds, since they are getting bigger and it's getting colder they need something. I believe in re-use so I'm building it out of pallets. Friday, October 29 View Page We had a couple smaller pumpkins in the front yard that Jonas had impaled and we discovered that chickens really like pumpkins, they've been pecking away at them, look pretty scary. Saturday, October 30 View Page Saturday afternoon we headed out to the Squires to help light pumpkins for their neighborhood pumpkin walk. Pretty cool. Saturday, October 30 View Page They had them placed in the woods and .... Saturday, October 30 View Page in the streams. The pictures don't quite do it justice. But you can see it was cold, spitting snow. Saturday, October 30 View Page Even had some triple deckers. You can see we've had some rain over the last few days, that's the worst 34 degrees and raining. They put saran wrap around them to keep the wind from blowing them out but tonight it was more of a bother than it was worth. We were soaked, covered in pumpkin guts and cold by the time we were done. Saturday, October 30 View Page But it was fun and was pretty neat to see. Glad we helped out, this is quite an undertaking, I'm crazy but I don't think I would bite off this much :-) Saturday, October 30 View Page Here are their giants all carved up, I never got the Hatter thinned down enough such that the light would come through enough, so they put a spot light on it. Saturday, October 30 View Page On the way home we swung by the Young's to check out their carved giants, pretty nice :-) Sunday, October 31 View Page Well Happy Halloween! Gees, woke up to this. J just had to get out and play in it .... but I'm not quite ready for this. Sunday, October 31 View Page Figured I'd better get mine carved. Moved the 898 into the garage but didn't dare move the 1126 (figured it would fall apart), so put up my pumpkin shade house and a couple blankets to block the wind and carved it outside. Still spitting snow. This was my attempt at "Jabba the Hut", Sunday, October 31 View Page Opened up the back and much to my surprised found a nasty pumpkin pudding mess inside. Holy cow, the lower walls appeared to be thinner than expected, hence why it collasped under it's own weight, but overhanging the pallet certainly didn't help. Because air was getting into the chamber the walls and floor really started to disintegrate causing this gooey, smelling muck. Live and learn. Froze my hands sifting through to find seeds. Sunday, October 31 View Page So in the "comfort" of my garage I carved our 898. This was our Fair pumpkin which came from the 1170 Breznick - this pumpkin went 9% heavy and had 8-9" side walls - I wonder how big this one would have gotten had I let it go? We decide on the Cheshire Cat to go along with Squire's "Alice in Wonderland" theme. Kind of wanted to take this one out to their place for tonight but as usual I'm already cramming way more into one day than I should. Sunday, October 31 View Page I thought it came out pretty good... we are all mad here you know. Sunday, October 31 View Page Jabba lit up. Sunday, October 31 View Page My little Vader. Sunday, October 31 View Page And my little wood fairy. Sunday, October 31 View Page Got tired of freezing my hands, so rigged up this setup to sort though the goo - leftover wire mesh from the chicken coop :-). Got a decent amount of seeds, I was worried there for awhile :-) I'll clean 'em and dry them, then plant a couple to test germination. Stay tuned. Wednesday, November 3 View Page Wow, Skywalker must have been here today :-) Came home from work today to find Jabba, collasped under his own weight. I had a feeling this might happen since I had weakened the sides by carving it, plus we had our first heavy frost last night (low of 26 F) and then it thawed out to 44 F today. Well so much for this pumpkin, I was hoping it was going to last for the "pumpkin smashing party" but I guess not. I collected 324 seeds from this pumpkin and got 299 from the 1158. Hopefully over the weekend I'll germinate a couple from each pumpkin just to make sure the seeds are viable. Wednesday, November 3 View Page Last weekend while at the Squires there was some photographer there, he asked me a few questions. I guess he was freelancing for Yankee magazine, Ann sent me this link to his article. Seemed like a nice guy but not too keen on the details seeing that he spelled Ann and Dick's last name wrong, surprised he got mine right. Here's the link. http://www.yankeefoliage.com/blog/foliage_report_27_2010 Sunday, November 14 View Page Today is our "End of Season - Smash 'em Party". Jonas was more then ready to help! He's been waiting for this for days. Usually the kids and I do all the smashing, but this year we decided to invite some friends over to experience the joy of smashing pumpkins! Sunday, November 14 View Page Took the top off one of Erskine's pumpkins and decided to carve it into the Green Bay Packers symbol since Gail is from Wisconsin and such a big Packer fan. Sunday, November 14 View Page Here's the inside of one of my feral giants, the design was really cool so I had to take a picture. Looks like the inside of a pepper. We turned this pumpkin into a pinata. Sunday, November 14 View Page Here is the pumpkin cooler (gotta keep the beer cold) and the pinata, now were ready for some fun. Sunday, November 14 View Page People were pretty tenative when they started, but after a few swings it was hard to get them to stop and take turns. This first pumpkin didn't last to long. Sunday, November 14 View Page The pinata was a big hit (no pun intended), it took some serious hits before it gave up it's booty. The kids loved that! Sunday, November 14 View Page My friends Bill and Mark schemeing. Yes this looks like a bad combination, beer, propane, gasoline and a great pumpkin.... hmm, I wonder what they have in mind? Sunday, November 14 View Page I can't put the video on here (I'll have to figure out how to but it on you-tube), but yes we tried to blow up a giant. First attempt we successfully started a brush fire but no exploding pumpkin :-) Second attempt was a bit better but just a big flame, no huge kaboom like we were hoping. Next year we'll have to get my brother-in-law to come, he has a license for stuff that goes boom. Sunday, November 14 View Page A hockey game broke out using pieces of pumpkin, the tractor bucket was one of the goals. We also had some pumpkin bowling and pumpkin chuckin' off the roof. A good time was had by all AND no body got hurt :-) Sunday, November 14 View Page Since most of the destruction took place on the driveway clean up was fairly easy, another good reason to have a tractor! Sunday, November 14 View Page What a great day we had, beautiful 59F degree sunny day and lots of fresh air, some good beer, good food and friends to share it with. Definitely think this will become an annual event, we're already schemeing on some "destruction" ideas for next year and we'll have a year to work on that exploding pumpkin thing. Note the chickens in the background, they're helping to clean up :-) Monday, November 15 View Page Videos from our end of season smash 'em party. We had fun. Pumpkin bowling : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dfnmcL-XMU Pitching pumpkins off the roof : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcK_f-3yciQ Flaming a giant : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tPoEyfp5EI If you don't watch any of them, watch this one, the grand finale. Check out the chicken in the background :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ois45DkfvqM Thursday, November 18 View Page My wife works with some folks in Fishkill, NY. They are planning a pumpkin harvest festival tomorrow as part of a diverity celebration. So we sent them a pumpkin, I hauled it down to the Bldg 971 loading dock in Burlington and the dudes there weighed it (251 lbs) and boxed it up and sent it to Fishkill on their daily tractor trailer. Way too funny. Thursday, November 18 View Page Someone in shipping had a sense of humor, though it should have been from Linus VanPelt, oh well, it was still funny. We had a 450 lb pumpkin set aside that we wanted to send them but it just couldn't hold on, started leaking and getting soft a couple days ago, I actually tried filling a gouged hole with expanding foam to seal it off, but it didn't really work. So we sent them the most solid pumpkin we had left, it actually came off Erskine's front porch. Friday, November 19 View Page So Peter Hoh carved our pumpkin in the IBM cafe. I guess he had a great time, said he never talked to so many people in his life. And yes he got all the same crazy questions we all get, "is that real", "how many pies can you make with that?" I actually sent him some powerpoint presentations, one on FAQs, one on carvings and one on the life span of a pumpkin so he had some ammo. He had a lot of Korean and Chinese folks there, I guess they were amazed, some even went home and brought their kids in to see it. :-) I love pumpkins, they make everybody smile. Friday, November 19 View Page This is the back side of Peter's carving, in case you're not familiar with it, that's the I (eye) B (bee) M logo and IBM celebrating 100 years. Nice job. Saturday, November 20 View Page Still have a few pumpkins leftover, this was our cooler from last weekend. Jonas sure does love busting up pumpkins, so do the chickens. Saturday, November 20 View Page Smashing pumpkins is a messy business, there's always some back splatter :-) Saturday, November 20 View Page Abigail took her turn with a much more subdued approach. Saturday, November 20 View Page We had a couple nights of outragous winds, so much that it lifted a couple panels right out of the greenhouse (we're using this for chicken shelter now). Wind also blew down a HUGE dead hickory tree across on neighbor's driveway. Bill and I spent a few hours helping them cut it up, we even split and stacked it. I probably got a cord and a half, Tim (his tree) probably got at least a 3/4 cord and there's still plenty more to go. It was quite the work out, no end to go to the gym :-) Saturday, November 20 View Page This is the pumpkin that we were considering sending to Fishkill, good thing we didn't because over the last 48 hours it really turned to mush (had to move it out of the garage before it leaked everywhere). Saturday, November 20 View Page Decided to cut it open and see how thick the walls were, not so much. This was the pumpkin I called "Ernest" which came off the 1237 Horton plant, it has seen alot of miles as this one was used as a store front display downtown for five weeks or so, then became a yawn ornament for Dave (a guy I work with) until just a couple weeks ago. Dave had promised some neighborhood kids seeds so I'll salvage a few for him. Wednesday, November 24 View Page Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Especially want to say thank you to all you veterans out there, we have much to be thankful in this country and a lot of it is due to the blood, sweat and tears of brave men and women who serve this great Nation. Wednesday, November 24 View Page Well, this is the last pumpkin standing, it was a volunteer off of the 1170 Breznick plant. Never did weigh it or name it, it just kind of showed up. But it had nice thick walls, same shape and color as it's older sister (Eva - our Fair pumpkin), I think I'll call her Edna. Wednesday, November 24 View Page :-) Count your blessings, have a great day! Thursday, November 25 View Page On Thanksgiving day a lot of people take hikes to either build up their appetites or help burn off some calories, we decided to finish off my neighbors tree instead. Thursday, November 25 View Page This is my brother-in-law Willy. He's got all the gear and a wicked saw, does a bang up job. We certainly worked up an appetite, but not for these..... Thursday, November 25 View Page I have never seen grubs so huge! I was tempted to put these on a plate to serve on the Thanksgiving table but I think my wife would not have been amused. So the chickens got them, their Thanksgiving meal :-) Friday, November 26 View Page My nephew Morris, taking his first crack at smashing pumpkins! This is our last one. Friday, November 26 View Page Morris' dad taking his shot. Friday, November 26 View Page Our implements of destruction for smashing pumpkins. We have quite the pile, I need to find a hog farmer that would like some free food :-) the chickens can't eat that much. Friday, November 26 View Page Well I finally got around to germinating some of this year's seeds. 2 of 2 from the 1158 came up, 2 of 2 from the 898 came up (I was worried this one wasn't mature enough since it was harvested early for the fair), only 1 of 2 from the 1126 came up (was worried about these because I got to them so late and they were sitting in that muck for a few days). But at least it's good to know that they are all viable, so I'm thankful for that :-) Wednesday, December 1 View Page Well we had quite the big ass wind come through these parts, ripped the plastic on both my greenhouses (now being used for chicken weather protection). Wednesday, December 1 View Page Also shedded my "pumpkin house" that is (was) being used for chicken village. Wednesday, December 1 View Page It blew so hard that it actually snapped my flag pole clean off! Our wind chimes were scattered about and nearly everything was blown off the front porch. The news said they recorded 103mph winds on top of Mt. Mansfield! Thursday, December 2 View Page Of course trees are down everywhere and we were without power for over 24 hours. Lucky I have this old generator, which I haven't run in over two years (stored under the deck), much to my surprised it actually started! Enough to keep the frig and freezers running, and the well pump. So with the wood stove we made out alright. The road to our east was been closed off for two days but we could get out going west. Friday, December 3 View Page Got this patch in the mail from Wayne Moore (a grower from Owensboro, KY), thanks a lot Wayne, really appreciate it, that was a nice surprise to remind me how fun it is to grow giant pumpkins! So I guess it's offical now :-) Monday, December 20 View Page Had a freezing fog last night, looked pretty cool too. The moon was full so the fog really had a glow to it. Woke up to a white wonderland, nice. I guess winter is officially here tomorrow. Wednesday, December 22 View Page Since winter is here it's time to start thinking about seeds for next year. My friend Mike had the same seed (1378 Pitura) that I grew this year and was kind enough to give it to me to grow again... so I think I will. It was an easy plant and a steady grower (grew the 1158). I won't have a lot of time to grow next year as the current plan is to put up a barn next summer (if my back holds out - we'll see), so an easy/steady plant is what I need. BTW, last year I brought the 1378 Pitura though the VGVGA on-line auction for a meer $20 - I think I got a great deal on that one. Not sure yet the date for the 2011 auction but stay tuned, bargins to be had. Thursday, December 23 View Page I guess someone's dog got a hold of one of our birds, tore her up pretty good, not much left of her tail. We tried cleaning up the wound and put on some medicine, we'll keep her inside the back porch for a few days and she how she makes out. I wish people would keep their dogs leashed if they can't keep them under verbal control. Friday, December 24 View Page Christmas Eve and we got this little visitor in our garage. This is a Saw-Whet owl, first time I've actually seen one "in the wild", pretty cool. He somehow got trapped in our garage, we had to bring the cats inside and tried our best to persuade him to leave.... Friday, December 24 View Page but he ended up just flying from one perch to another, here he's actually resting on my pumpkin ring - is that a good omen? Eventually I gave up harassing him and went to bed, left the overhead doors open and he was gone in the morning. Merry Christmas everyone. Sunday, December 26 View Page For Christmas my daugther gave me this cool pumpkin tie (not too many places I can wear it - but it's "epic", or so I'm told). My son and Bill carved me this pumpkin :-) and kind of freaky, my wife bought me a photograph of a barred owl. So I guess 2010 we be remembered as the year of the owl. Sunday, December 26 View Page This is a photo that my neighbor's gave us for Christmas, really nice, somehow they caught it just right. This is not photo shopped, it's real, that's our fair pumpkin (Eva) acting as the "pot of gold" :-) I love it! Friday, December 31 View Page Warming up to 45 today so we figured we'd better get some snow sculpture in before it was all gone. Friday, December 31 View Page We built this giant roster to protect our chickens! The other day I caught my neighbor's dog red handed with a chicken in his mouth, he's lucky I'm not 15 years younger or he'd have a serious head ache. At any rate, wanted to wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR, best wishes for 2011 - GROW 'em BIG!