Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 53 Entries. Thursday, March 10 View Page These seeds will be making the trip to Niagara. How fun.   Thursday, March 10 View Page Don't worry Christy, we'll take good care of Stewie :)   Thursday, March 17 View Page Niagara was a blast. Then straight from Niagara to Disney World for a nice family vacation. Yesterday I drove a real Indy car around the Disney World race track. What an insane experience!   Thursday, March 17 View Page Though 1810 had a very low seed count I'm hoping to clone as many of the plants as possible. Matt Debacco has offered to clone all the 1810's planted this year. We are cloning early. Hopefully before June. That way Matt will have about a dozen different 1810 plants from which to choose pollen to pass around for pollinating this year's competition plants. Should make for a very interesting genetics opportunity.   Tuesday, March 22 View Page I just can't say enough about this moment or thank enough people.   Tuesday, March 22 View Page Another great shot.   Tuesday, March 22 View Page And one last shot. Thanks Blaine, it was definitely getting heavy! That smile is priceless.   Friday, April 8 View Page I can't even begin to express how proud my kids are to have "Stewie" in our home. Amber was very proud of herself after finding she was taller than the trophy. I woke her up the night I brought it home and she immediately rocketed out of bed so she could stand next to the trophy to see if she was bigger.   Sunday, April 24 View Page Baby 1810   Monday, May 16 View Page 23.7 was the low last night on my digital thermometer. I hope none of my bulbs burnt out in the middle of the night. Will know in an hour or 2. Round 2 tonight.   Thursday, June 9 View Page Just got back from my annual Canadian fishing trip. No hail this year while gone, but 103 degrees Tuesday they say. I don't believe it as the forecast for tomorrow is 55! Plants look good. Now the first 5K of the marathon begins. Vine burying / pruning in full swing. It's dryer here now than all last season.   Wednesday, June 22 View Page Life has been busy so not much posting sorry. Yesterday we had sustained winds 30ish all day. My plants looked real nice until then. Even with lots of wind protection I will probably have a nice sized pile of plant parts to remove when this storm system moves on....if ever.   Wednesday, June 22 View Page Then to salt the wound a bit I was out covering females on 1810 last night and noticed a brand spanking new mole run going right up the main of the 1810, playing around a bit in the plant, then continuing up the main of 1468....lol. I have very very few moles so this is not normal. Darn it. No new digging this morning. Kitty may have done her job. If not I expect to have a mole in the trap soon. That said all in all plants look pretty nice. Probably the best overall setup since the magical summer of 2007.   Thursday, June 23 View Page finally Here's 1468....   Thursday, June 23 View Page This one's a secret so I'm only giving out one digit in the weight This plant is the X8XX   Friday, June 24 View Page 1810 flowers...   Saturday, July 16 View Page Well it's hot. Forecast for the next 5 days is mid to upper 90's depending on who you watch and head index readings up to 115...lol. I've never had a streak of heat like this since I've been growing so it it will be interesting.   Saturday, July 16 View Page That said. I think I'm in better shape than ever at this point. MUCH better than last year plant wise and equal or ahead fruit wise. If the heat doesn't work us over too bad.   Saturday, July 16 View Page I'll try to get some pictures up of some D20ish stuff tomorrow. For those following it should be noted that while JD's Lucy Lu looks very much like 1810 it's growth curve is also nearly identical.   Sunday, July 17 View Page Here's a few pictures. No specific order. All in the D20 range +-. Here's the 1810. Looks a LOT like momma.   Sunday, July 17 View Page Here's 1468. This one looks like momma shape wise, but does not look like it will be real orange.   Sunday, July 17 View Page Here's 1605 Sweet. This is just a nice looking pumpkin that looks like it will be quite orange.   Sunday, July 17 View Page Crosses on those 3 are 1810 x self, 1468 x self, 1605 x 1810.   Thursday, July 28 View Page I wanted to do a quick entry so I can remind myself of a potential issue down the road. I'm about 95% sure my 1325 plant has pythium. Need to break out the big guns and see if we can keep from losing the entire thing.   Thursday, July 28 View Page That said.....pumpkins are growing pretty well. I still have 5 going at a "decent" pace.   Saturday, July 30 View Page 1810 bird bath split last night. It was nearly flat on it's shoulders and the distance between the blossom and stem was maybe 6 inches. It literally caved in on itself. Darn. One other plant has disease, 2 others foaming stumps, one other stem split....lol. Still planning to bust the scale in October.   Monday, August 1 View Page 1468   Wednesday, August 10 View Page My thermoter was at 51 this morning and it reads high so upper 40's. I don't remember the last time we've been under 60 for a low. Many 70's for lows and several 80's! This will put a halt on my rotting plants.   Thursday, August 18 View Page 1468. My kids used to make my pumpkins look big, but now the kids are big so the pumpkins look small! How time flies. Trust me this pumpkin is not small.   Thursday, August 18 View Page Ken you were concerned about your little "tumor" in the blossom of your 1520. Here's a BIG tumor for you. I look at this in a positive way. An extra pound on the scale in October. This fruit is large as well which may not be real obvious in the picture.   Tuesday, September 6 View Page Just got back from our annual family vacation to the north shore (of Lake Superior). It's a fantastic vacation and the kids love everything we do up there. It got cool while we were up there and I checked my digital thermometer when I returned home to see it had recorded a low temp of 39.9.....WOW! From 95 to that in like 3 days...haha. Someone close to here had frost yesterday morning and thankfully it wasn't me!   Tuesday, September 6 View Page That said I've done a terrible job of pictures lately. This Saturday I do my big triathlon for the year and I've been real focused on that. After that I will have some time freed up to take care of some pumkpin stuff.   Tuesday, September 6 View Page 1468 is still packing on the pounds. I'm actually surprised how well things are growing as I'd assumed they'd cut off very quickly this year and mature more early due to the HOT HOT summer. It could still happen I guess.   Thursday, September 8 View Page Here's a shot of Ron's 1789. Better known as "the freak." Simply unbelievable growth. Pollinated with 1810.   Monday, September 12 View Page Well triathlon season is done for me. Saturday went well. I was 7th overall out of 400 or so. I'm competitive so disappointed I couldn't catch the 4 guys right ahead of me, but the first and second guys were FAST so I couldn't have won.   Monday, September 12 View Page So not to fall off the horse I swam 1500 this morning and will likely get on the bike tonight.....lol. My pumpkin plants look like someone foliar fed gasoline and lit a match. That bad yes. Pumpkins are about done. No sense sugar coating that. At this point my thinking is "run what you brung and hope you brung enough."   Wednesday, September 14 View Page 34.5 last night for the low and that was only the tip of the iceberg so to speak. I'm expecting mid 20's tonight...we'll see what happens. No plant protection last night so I may have been lucky. We'll rig up something for tonight on 2 (1.25 to be more precise) plants and let the other 2 make some ice cubes.   Thursday, September 15 View Page This is not what we needed on 9-15   Friday, September 16 View Page Here's my 1276 Stevens 2011 DMG. It's off the 444 Beachy (1725 Harp x self). This was a genetics project that I was at first hesitant, but then very excited to grow. Remember that tumor that was going to gain me a pound at weigh-off? Well possibly due to neglect it went bad. I removed it and dried things out nicely, but cut a hair too close to the blossom and while drying it pinholed into the blossom nub and cavity. The pumkpin was healthy.   Friday, September 16 View Page 444 is the first plant I've ever had vine rot. The weather has been beyond challenging this year. The stump foamed up about July 20th, but the pumpkin grew well. When pulling the plant the main was rotted throuth 6' from the fruit. The pumpkin had gone from 20 / day to zero August 20th. No wonder.   Friday, September 16 View Page So the pumpkin sat for nearly a month and I think it gained about 1.5" CC. It estimated 1170 today, weighed 1276 and is pollinated with 1810. 1810 looked just like momma. This is going to be a real tough seed for me not to grow next year. The 444 was the biggest of 17 selfed 1725's grown in a field. The genetic potential here is somewhat staggering...lol. 1725 genetics know how to grow pumkpins. Period.   Sunday, September 18 View Page I cut the 1276 open today to remove seeds. The blossom DMG was 100% grower caused. I'm really kicking myself. The entire blossom end was a minumum of 6" thick maybe more like 8". Really sucked in so there was lots of meat sucked into the cavity. The blossom itself created a hollow tube through this meat about 6-8" long and it was so small I couldn't even get my pinky in it. Of course my knife found it and created a DMG fruit darn it. There were some big brown 1725 tpe seeds inside.   Sunday, September 18 View Page 1065 Stevens 2011. 1725 Harp x 1810 Stevens (John Hopkins's 1810 plant). This pumpkin was pollinated AFTER the stump foamed and the main was filleted just about out to the secondary junction the fruit was grown (fruit about 6' out on a secondary). Pumpkin did average 30# days for a while, but ran out of plant and time. I think it was 68 days old Saturday when weighed. I think it was 1# away from going right on to chart.   Friday, September 23 View Page 1468. Waiting.   Monday, September 26 View Page Well I took another break from growing this weekend as I had a 40th wedding anniversary to attend. Not to be one to not multi-task a road trip I ran a half marathon. This was likely the best executed race of my life and I ran 1:21:56. 6:15 per mile. First time I ran over 10 miles since 2006 :) Yes it hurts....lol. Now I've run much faster in my more highly trained days, but this was a fantastic effort for me.   Monday, September 26 View Page I was also told that this coming weekend in Nekoosa, WI there is a fruit coming that has a "good shot" at a state record. Oh and by the way state record = WORLD RECORD. So with all the talk lately on the boards / diarys here's someone coming to Wisconsin with a potential WR. I will only say that they are NOT from out of state :)   Wednesday, September 28 View Page 1605 Sweet x 1810 Taping larger than the WR 1810.   Tuesday, October 4 View Page 1481.5 2011. 1468 x self. Thanks again to Nekoosa and the WGPG for a very nicely done event.   Tuesday, October 4 View Page We are also having a beautiful streak of weather. About 7 days straight of 75-80 and sunny. This same thing happened last year right after the 1810 plant froze like a rock 9-25 and probably froze me out of another 20-30# darn it. September was pretty poor in 2010 and 2011. Real similar actually.   Monday, October 10 View Page 1575 1605 Sweet x 1810. We'll see how this one does in my patch next year as well. Saturday was great. Great weather, great event, great company.   Tuesday, October 25 View Page 1575 was opened up recently. My second fruit ever with zero dill rings / internal cracks running across the ribs.   Tuesday, October 25 View Page Cover of recently released Guiness World Records 2012!   Tuesday, October 25 View Page Here's the upper left corner of page 140!!! I've included the pumpkin and squash. This is super super cool to actually be IN the book. I didn't exactly expect to see the picture of me with the garage of LIVE in the background so no picture :)