Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 20 Entries. Sunday, June 30 View Page I've finally got my digital camera figured out so now I can start my pumpkin diary! It's a little late but there is still plenty to write about. This is my first year growing pumpkins so pretty much everything I know I learned from BigPumpkins.com. I'm not really even sure what kind of pumpkins I'm growing. I had purchased I large pumpkin last Halloween (at least then I thought it was large) and I saved some seeds from it. I planned on just tossing em in the back yard and watching em grown. Hehe, boy if I only new then... Well anyways, I've attached a photo of the seeds I planted. I think they might be AG's or maybe Big Max, I really am not sure.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is the picture of the pumpkin that I got the seeds from. I thought it was HUGE when I got it.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is a pic of one of my plants taken on June 3rd. I had started the seeds in late April but the plants didn't do much till the weather warmed up in June.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is my other plant also taken on June 3rd.   Sunday, June 30 View Page I got some "Big Moon" seeds from a friend of mine and started the seeds at the end of may as a back up. At that point my two plants hadn't done much of anything so I was getting worried. This pic was also taken on June 3rd.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is my first plant as of June 30th. It has really taken off the last couple of weeks and it looks like some flowers are starting to form.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is my second plant as of June 30th. It has also shown a lot of growth recently. The two plants are less than 10 feet apart at the roots. I've been tempted to cull one of them but I can't bring myself to do it.   Sunday, June 30 View Page Here is the "Big Moon" pumpkin as of June 30th. I had to relocate it last week because I originally planted it between my first two plants thinking I would only keep one of the three. As you can see by the pic the soil in its new home hasn't been prepaired for it, but it seems to be hanging in there so far. I wonder if Big Moon can cross with an AG? I'm going to try and polinate the Big Moon with one of my other plants, just to see what I get.   Wednesday, July 3 View Page Here is my pumpkin plant #1. Its doing well and has been flowering the last few days.   Wednesday, July 3 View Page Here is my #2 plant. Its also been flowering for a few days. Its doing well but the main vine has a couple of cracks in it. I'm not sure what effect thats gonna have on it, but it doesn't seem to be hurting anything at the moment.   Wednesday, July 3 View Page Here is my #3 plant, looks like it is starting to vine. Seems like it took the transplant very well. I think the warm sunny weather has really help it out.   Thursday, July 11 View Page Here's a pic of both of my plants together. I am amazed at how different the plants are considering they come from seeds of the same pumpkin. I'm glad that I kept them both because the one that wasn't doing so well at first has really taken off and surpased the other.   Thursday, July 11 View Page Here is a shot of the plant that is doing the best. Its sending out vines in all directions. I don't have the heart to prune it yet. I think I will let it do what it wants for a while. I'm hoping that it will set pumpkins in the next couple of weeks so I can have something come Halloween.   Sunday, August 11 View Page Here is a shot of the 3 plants in my patch. They all have pumpkins set so I guess this was a successful first year! I'm just hoping my pumpkins will make it all the way to Halloween w/o some sort of disaster (i.e. some kid deciding my pumpkins would look better smashed in the middle of the street).   Sunday, August 11 View Page This is my best pumpkin so far. I have no idea how much it weighs but if I had to guess I would say its easily over 100#. I had to cull an 80# pumpkin already and it wasn't nearly as large. I'm thinking this will be the pumpkin I keep for Halloween.   Sunday, August 11 View Page Here is my newest pumpkin. Its growing on a healthy big max plant. I missed watching my other pumpkins start out because I was out of town, so it will be fun to watch this guy grow.   Tuesday, August 13 View Page Just wanted to correct my last post. The pumpkin is growing on a Big Moon not a Big Max.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Here is my biggest pumpkin so far. I haven't taken any measurements of it. I can't seem to figure out how to measure the circumference when I get get under the darn thing. Anyway, this is as big as she is going to get I'm afraid. Not much compared to most of the AG's, but not too bad for a Big Max pumpkin (I'm actually not sure what kind it is but some people said it looks like a Big Max). I consider this a succesful first year growing big pumpkins. Can't wait to next year when I can grow "giant" pumpkins :-)   Thursday, August 29 View Page Here is the pumpkin growing on my "Big Moon" plant. Its been growing at a slow and steady pace for about a month now. Hopefully it will keep on growing right up until Halloween.   Thursday, August 29 View Page Here is my newest pumpkin on my big max plant. This will probably be the last pumpkin that I let grow this year. There is not much good growing season left and I don't want to divert any of the plants energy away from the now 3 pumpkins I have growing on it. I think I'm going to try and get the pumpkin to sit upright so it will have a real nice shape come Halloween :-)