Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 6 Entries. Saturday, June 27 View Page Pumpkin "patch" aka the mound. Staked the vines to prevent them blowing and cracking the mains during bad storms. Location, as I'm learning is all wrong (under a tree, so partially shaded) and... well... I don't have enough dirt tilled. Left side is the howdens with the giants growing on the right and in the back. this is gonna be interesting if I get anything. Saturday, June 27 View Page First female giant pumpkin. .. please don't mention the weeding that needs to be done. I'm getting to that today. Also this is out in the grass... almost agains the fence which can't be removed due to the vines growing through them. Hopefully I can spare another rookie the same mistake. The fence was installed to prevent the bunnies from gaining entrance to the pumpkins when transplanted. We have a HUGE bunny problem out here. I'm trying to move that section of vine out away from the fence since it is still out near the tip. Saturday, June 27 View Page This is how I repair split vines on spaghetti squash- I use floral tape, cutting a length that I know is too long if I'm working in small areas, or will use it straight from the roll if I have enough room. This particular vine split when we moved it up the trellis. This is a two person job, one person has to hold the split together, as tightly as possible, and the other wraps the floral tape up the vine. The floral tape sticks to itself, and generally won't open easily. I always start just before the split and continue a little after it. this is the second time I've taped this vine, and it seems to be doing well for it. Tuesday, June 30 View Page Burried the main vines today. Sprayed with the milk last night as PM as showed its ugly head (and I had no clue what it actually was until reading about it here). Lost the first pumpkin that was on the vine... due to heat? It wasn't pollinated to begin with. 3-4 more are on the vine, nothing is polinated yet. I'm frustrated, and aggravated. Howdens continue to do well. Put the fabric sand combo under another one tonight. Have two more that are going to be needing it as well. Haven't burried the mains on them cause (1) they're wild (2) my knee started to act up, worse than ever. Friday, July 3 View Page I'm ready to kill my neighbor, he has cucumber beetles, bacterial wilt, and refuses to do anything about either. Meaning I'm going to have to spray either twice as much or hop the fence with my bad knee and beat his ass down for not doing anything about it. I'm opting for the first over the second for the time being. We've already lost (a week after he lost a few plants) two cucumber plants. Saturday, July 4 View Page SVB is here. Caught one this morning, and promptly tried to leave it in a canning jar to die....only when I brought it in the house it got lose. and I lost sight of it. So it will die in the house. Lost another plant to wilt. the straight 8 cucumber went down this time. Will be spraying tonight. fertilized last night, trying to get compost pile healthy enough to be generating tea.