Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 43 Entries. Wednesday, July 2 View Page This will be my first post on BP. I grew last year but i started very late and I only a few plants. I have a bit more time this year so i decided to give it the ol-college try for the 2014. I currently have 13 plants growing split between my upper patch and my lower patch. I have growing Millers, Wallace, Mathison, Bryston.   Wednesday, July 2 View Page This picture is 4 of my Miller's growing in my upper patch. I have been having issues with Deer they have been jumping over my fence. This afternoon i had 2 deer in the middle of my patch playing poker, they were just laying on the ground. Note to self build a higher fence.   Wednesday, July 9 View Page This is my lower Patch. This was going to be my prime spot since it gets almost full sun but it was totally flooded out this year until mid May. The back two were planted May 10th. The front two Bryson 1382 and a Miller 1985 were germinated may 14th and put in the ground May 20th.   Wednesday, July 9 View Page This is the back two plants in my lower patch, one that i grew last year and another Miller.   Wednesday, July 9 View Page My upper Patch things are coming along nicely.   Wednesday, July 9 View Page My 4 millers on my upper patch. I have 2 pumpkins growing on the back 3 still waiting to decide. The left one just has one.   Wednesday, July 9 View Page This is a Miller 1985, it is the only plant on my upper patch that gets mostly full sun. It is on day 20 and the cir is 64". The plant taped in today at 37 feet wide and 32 long. I let the side vines grow because i was getting short stems on the females. I think i will have to cut the forward vine at some point and i wanted to have a big plant to push from behind.   Monday, July 21 View Page Well Booo my pumpkin shut down and stopped growing on day 25 it was 87" cir it's ott was 205". It was ramping up and on the last night it had gained over 25 pounds. We had a really hot day and I was at work when i had gotten home this plant was wilted pretty bad and I guess i should have set my timers to water just a bit more. The next day the gains basically stopped. I figured either the plant was just lining up or it had shut down the fruit. Lucky i had another great looking female pop the next day so i pollinated it hoping the big pumpkin would pick up. Well its been 6 days with zero growth and the blossom is turning orange. The backup looks good hope it sticks. The plant is very healthy except for some sun scald.   Monday, July 21 View Page This is a picture of my day 20 yesturday it's 58" cir. Its from a Miller 1659   Monday, July 21 View Page After some discussions with Glenn I had culled the first pumpkin on this plant july 11th the blossom end was looking no good the pumpkin was 45 pounds when i cut it off. Now i am on day 18 with this pumpkin in the picture.   Monday, July 21 View Page This is my lower patch. The plants in here are a month behind my upper patch. I only have 1 plant still to pollinate hope my tuesdays pollination sticks. The other 3 look good so far.   Monday, July 21 View Page From my lower patch a 1985 Miller   Monday, July 21 View Page The Green Machine, i hope it holds together its growing too fast i think.   Monday, July 21 View Page Another green, I have 4 greenies growing on two plants i will pick the best in a few more days.   Monday, July 21 View Page The First female out on my Wallace 1872. The seed was donated by Glenn   Tuesday, July 29 View Page This picture was taken on day 25 from one of my many 1985's.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page This is from my Miller 1659. Picture is from day 27.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page Miller 1985 this plant is growing great.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page Miller 1985, This is the 4th female out all the females have been shaped long. The first two aborted and the 3rd one was in a very bad position. It's growing great huge plant behind this one.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page This is from my lower patch. All the plants down here are in great shape. I am just waiting to see if the first female out on the Bryson took.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page The Mathison in the back has a nice one growing now. The plant in the front is two plants it's a 1872 Wallace growing towards the Mathison and i have a 1486 Jarvis which is growing towards the camera. The 1872 has wheel style pumpkin on it right now so we will see how that works out. The Jarvis has 4 growing on it right now. The reason for 4 is that i am affraid of splitting another one on it so i am trying to even the growth over a bunch of the squash's then i will cull then later on 1 by 1 or until the growth from the one i pick slows.   Tuesday, July 29 View Page I got my soil results back today from my upper patch since i was concerned that my Calcium was low on my Big pumpkin which had aborted a few weeks ago at about 200 pounds. Every thing is bang on except for my Nitrogen which is fairly low. I would hit it with some Calcium Nitrate but my Calcium is high and don't need any more so i gonna hit it with methylene urea which is a slow release. I figure the reason for the pumpkin to abort is my sandy/rocky soil which does not hold moisture very well and the fact that just was not watering enough through the hot day while i am at work. I cut the pumpkin off you can see it in the left. I already have a nice one growing on it now so fingeres crossed.   Saturday, August 16 View Page My lower patch pumpkins are growing at a much faster rate then my upper patch. I am seeing some pretty good numbers. I pushed one plant too far and split the pumpkin. The soil down here is 6" of silt loam then clay. I was able to slightly amend this year with tree chippings and added Cal Prill to adjust the ph from 4.8. The upper patch is on the back side of a gravel pit so i have the plants growing in sandy/gravel/bolders which requires lots of sprinkler water and fairly constantly drip nutrients to keep things going.   Saturday, August 16 View Page This picture was taken on dap 25 from 1985 Miller in my lower patch. I planted this on May 20th and it has been growing very fast. The past 4 days here has been rainy/cloudy/cold and it's still growing fast. It's cir on dap 25 is 106", i am hoping for some sun to see if it will get going. I am not expecting much since it was planted so late and the pollination date is late too.   Saturday, August 16 View Page BooooooM I wanted to see how far i could push this 1985 in my lower patch and it popped on day 23 at 108". I think it could have been prevented by me adding some foliar Calcium spray on a regular basis to keep up with the other ferts i was giving it. This plant is in awesome shape, huge leaves, massive thick main vine and secondary's I am going to figure out a way to at least grow something small on this one. I was scraping away at the blossom to see if it was soft or not but it was normal. Calcium uptake has been a big issue for me this year which i feel is easy to fix and will put me in good shape for next year.   Saturday, August 16 View Page I was given a bunch of seeds in 2010 from my uncle and i decided to planted the no-name seed in 2013 and grew a 853 pumpkin. I grew that 853 seed this year and the pumpkin is cir 124 and doing good. The plant is average with lots of sun scald on the tips where my sprinklers can't reach. The pumpkin itself is starting to leak all this clear liquid and jelly from every where. It sounds very solid when you bang on it so no idea what is going on their.   Saturday, August 16 View Page I am having an issue on 1 plant that i just noticed. We have had lots of rain and cloudy weather for the past 4 to 5 days now and not sure if that is the reason. During the past 4 days i have stopped my fert drip program in worries of popping some more pumpkins today i resumed fertilizer. Is it Potassium Deficiency? Maybe Manganese Deficiency? I am going to get a soil and tissue test from this plant.   Saturday, August 16 View Page From a Miller 1659 growing on a secondary vine. I wanted to see what i could do with a pumpkin on a secondary vine. I ended up cutting of a very oddly shaped pumpkin basketball size on the main vine and went with this one. It's ott 260 and with this crappy weather this one has not grown much in the past 5 days.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page Leaves are looking solid on all my plants with almost no Powdery Mildew. I was able to time the shift of relative humidity jump at night. The shift happened on my patch July 28th. I sprayed for Powdery Mildew with Bravo the next evening. My first line of defense for PM was the addition of Trichoderma in the root zone. Bravo 500 a contact spray is my second line which i have applied 3 times so far this year. If things get out of control i have a systemic which i would only use as a last resort, so far i have only sprayed 5 individual leaves. I do have some fertilizer spray damage which was due to me rushing to spray before work, i had measured out for Liters in stead of Gallons.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page A picture of me getting ready to seed Canola.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page A picture of me and the the seeding rig minus the third thing that is towed but you can't see in the picture a 4,000 gallon straight 28-0-0 liquid nitrogen tank.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page One of the many wheat fields   Tuesday, September 16 View Page Ok so i guess i over did it!!! I should have posted this a while back. The pumpkin is a lot bigger then it looks in the picture i should have measured the cir but on day 10 it started growing like gang busters and it popped. I had a cover on the pumpkin that i had taken off and this picture was taken after it had been in the direct sun for a few days while i was out of town. The explosion happened over night and the growth stopped immediately.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page Another angle of the pumpkin split. Also my trimming of the leaf stems will be better next year.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page Day 73 on a miller 1985. Trickling along, Currently i have 3 pumpkins over 1,000 which was my goal for the year. 1 of those a Wallace 1872 just blew out on the blossom end the other day it was a big wheel pumpkin and i was not expecting much. The blossom end blow outs have been a huge bummer for me this year. I should have been adding a more readily available calcium to my mix. As on all my younger plants received the calcium they need and i have not had any more issues.   Tuesday, September 16 View Page This is my biggest pumpkin. Today it's only day 55 for this pumpkin. I planted this one late, it went in end of may. I stopped measuring it after she broke 1,000. I will tape it again end of the month assuming it holds together. It will be close but i might end up with 5 pumpkins that will get over 1,000 this year   Wednesday, September 24 View Page This is the 1872 Wallace crossed with 1985 Miller it went down about a week ago with a blossom end split. The plant started out very slow so i had put it in an area of the patch that does not get much sun. Today i took off my tent because i was going to go seed hunting and take the pumpkin out of the patch. It's hard to measure these things in the enclosures i have so, to my surprise I guess I under estimated the size of this one by quite a bit. I was able to finally measure it properly because i could not get the tape around it in the enclosure. Not only did it have a blossom end split it had a stem split that would have been able to fix if i caught it early. The vine going into the pumpkin is the size of my wrist. I am crouching over a bit on the back of the pumpkin so i am not standing up straight (pumpkin is a bit smaller then it looks). I had kinda written off this pumpkin at the beginning because of it's wheel shape but it ended up filling in nicely and i should have paid more attention to it.   Friday, September 26 View Page I was informed it would be nice to share some more numbers coming down to the last few weeks before our weigh-offs. Well this plant is almost 150 days old and not much signs of dying. It also has my youngest pumpkin growing at day 45. This is also my 3rd attempt on setting a pumpkin with this plant.   Friday, September 26 View Page My youngest pumpkin the skin is baby soft and is still doing 17 pounds a day in our crappy rainy weather we have been having. I was hoping this was going to make 1K but with the weather forecast calling for lost of rain and cold it's not looking good for this one.   Friday, September 26 View Page I noticed way bigger leaves this year mostly 30 plus inches.   Friday, September 26 View Page I had another friend pop up this morning on my largest pumpkin. It appears to be another measurement of 3.5 inches. It still growing!!!!! I still have not taped my largest pumpkins since the 16th and don't plan on taping them until the 30th. I will post some further measurements on October 12th.   Saturday, October 4 View Page Stump from my 1985 Miller that i pulled a few days ago. I had issues keeping pumpkins on this plant, i had set 4 pumpkins and every one had blossom end splits. I do blame the splits on my non available calcium and boron in my soil which created thin walls on the blossom side. Every pumpkin that i had set on this plant had the best growth in my patch and the last pumpkin split when it ramped up to do almost 50 pounds a day and had complete blow out. The stump is huge at almost 3 feet circumference.   Wednesday, October 8 View Page Another picture of my 1985 miller stump