Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 18 Entries. Wednesday, May 4 View Page Thought I would do a limited Diary this year. My plants have been in the ground for just over a week now. The last three days we had freezing temps here in Central MN but the ground inside the cold frames is maintaining thanks to heat and soil heating cables. Outside, well not so much. On Sunday AM the top soil was actually frozen again. Yesterday was the first nice day of the year here and hopefully there are many more to come.   Tuesday, May 17 View Page Cold temps the last two night but I believe I am done with the heat lamps for now. Between the heat lamps and soild heating cables I have a lot of things plugged in. Long Range forcast looks much improved. My 985 is leading the pack out of the gate but so far mot of the plants are doing well.   Tuesday, May 24 View Page After a cold wet start to the year this warm weather lately has the plants coming along nicely. All the plants are still inside their cold frames and uncovered during the day. I have a few decisions to make yet as far as what plants I will end up growing but it looks like the following will make the lineup. 985 Werner, 1556.5 Werner, 1294.5 Revier, 1689 Jutras, 1135 Est Revier, 1422 Ailts, as well as my 980 Steil (1294.5 Revier x 1325 Hopkins) I also have one State Fair plant has been in for over a month that is struggling along. That is my 1226 Est Steil (1091 Foss x 1425 Revier) This weather is sure helping thigs out.   Sunday, August 14 View Page It has been a tough year to say the least. I had good intensions of doing a diary this year but a busy schedule prevented that. So I will get caught up now I guess. Last year I lost most of my plants to baseball size hail in a storm on 7/17. This year I lost most of my leaves to a hail storm on 7/15. Then what leaves I had left I lost to hail again on 7/23. To make things worse I lost 3 pollinations to hail with each storm. Add in all the wind and trees we have down this year it makes it hard to grow a big pumpkin. But, we are plugging along despite the damaged plants, foaming stumps and vine rot that came with all the rain in those storms. Got some pictures I will try to get up tomorrow. Lets just say I am not on pace to set any records.   Sunday, August 14 View Page Should be able to still grow a giant on these things...lol I am getting good at growing on hail damaged plants. Great numbers until the hail then they fall way off day 30 and by day 45 kick in again as the new growth takes over. Not the ideal way.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is my 980 Steil crossed with the 1810 Stevens and day 40 is tomorrow. should be sitting in the low 300's OTT. Not going anywhere fast because the plant is small, but the cross is a good one.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is my other 980 Steil which is crossed with the 1556.5 Werner. This plant is totally terminated including the main because the plant was not really growing anymore. It will also be in the low 300's tomorrow at day 40. Plant has lots of damage but the stump main are doing well.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is the 1556.5 Werner and it has been the runt all year. It is also a fairly small plant but has decided to start growing a little faster lately. Day 40 is today and it is sitting at 291 OTT. Not the numbers I am looking for but none of the plants are doing anything special and this one was way behind the others earlier. The shape is a real issue as it seems to be kind of self limiting. Oh, the cross on this one is the 1556 Werner x 1810 Stevens   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is the 1135 Est Revier. This seed is really aggressive and the plant is still growing very fast despite the pumpkin growing as well. I am affraid to terminate any more of the plant because I would like this one to hold together. It is crossed with the 1810 Stevens also so I certainly hope it stays together. Today is day 40 and it is at 314 OTT which is pretty good considering almost the entire plant was lost to hail in the first storm. Now it has a foaming stump and surgury on the stump and 4 ft of the main.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is the 985 Werner. This plant is in the best spot in the patch and is the only plant that survived that had soil heating cables. This plant got really hit hard by the hail and did not grow much between day 30 and 40 but has kicked it in high gear again. I went with an earlier pollination on this one so day 50 is Wednesday. Sitting at about 330 OTT right now and gains have been between 25 and 30 lbs a day. The cross on this one is the 1294.5 Revier.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is the 1422.5 Ailts x 1135 Est Revier. As you can see this plant actually has leaves on it....lol Some of this plant was covered during the hail storm but the pollination was lost. So, I pollinated it again with the 1135 and it is doing well. Day 20 on this one was 200 OTT so it is growing well despite having to do surgury on 5 ft of the main vine due to rot. This plant is very aggressive also and has been fun to grow and I love the shape. Due to the late pollination is is going to run out of time but I will do my best to push it and it has a HUGE plant behind it.   Sunday, August 14 View Page This is the 1294 Revier x Self. Once again the pollination on this one was lost from the hail so I started another selfing it. It is growing very well and the day 20 OTT was 189. Today is day 24 and it is packing on the weight. Once again, I am going to run out of time on this one so I will push it hard. I really like the 1294.5 seed.   Tuesday, September 6 View Page My 980 Steil went down today. It was the 980 Steil x 1556.5 Werner. The blossom end rotted at day 15 and was basically a big hole but it did not go to the interior so I nursed it along. It made it until today when I could probe all the way to the inside. Ironically today my new digital lifting scale arrived so I was able to get an UOW. TOday was day 61 and the final measurements were 141-98-93 or 332 OTT and an UOW of 828 on the scale. The plant had bad hail damage and the pumpkin did not have much growing left but it is always nice to make it to the end of the season.   Thursday, September 15 View Page I let everything Freeze last night except the 1294 Revier that is still growing good. It is also the only plant that doesn't have hail damage. I enclosed that one in a temporary Greenhouse and heated it. Leaves are all froze and dead now, hopefully I can get a week out of the vines yet. It got down to 28 so everything else is done. This has been quite the year: Cold Wet Spring, Record Rain in June and July, three hail storms in July, exteme Heat in July/August and a September 14 killing frost :) Better luck next year I guess.   Monday, September 26 View Page Here are the three pumpkins we took to Delano. The 1135 Revier Est x 1810 Steven in front, the 980 Steil 2010 x the 1810 Stevens and the 1226 Est Steil 2010 x 1294 Revier. The first two are pumpkins I grew and the back one is my Son Cole's pumpkin he grew with intensions to take to the state fair, but dad ended up being gone so it stayed in the patch. Cole was really excited we were going to be home for the Delano GPC weighoff so he could weigh his first pumpkin and I am not sure he slept on Friday night.   Monday, September 26 View Page Here is Cole with his first pumpkin. The pumpkin ended up going heavy and weighed 912. I guess that makes it the 912 Steil 2011. I would love to say Cole worked really hard on this plant but that lasted until the end of July when we found out I was going to be gone and we couldn't get the pumpkin to the MN State Fair and we had just been hit by out third hail storm. After that he let the plant go but the pumpkin decided to keep growing some. After dad made him clean out the weed mess I was suprised to see that the pumpkin had kept growing. Moral of the story is we have a much more motivated young grower who is talking about trying multiple plants next year, we'll see! I am still proud of him for his efforts, as he is the one that takes care of my plants when I am gone for a week at a time.   Monday, September 26 View Page Here is Cole and his proud Dad at the Delano Weighoff. My 1135 Revier Est X 1810 Stevens ended up going 15% heavy and weighed 1023 which was good enough for second place. Coles 1226 Steil Est x 1294 Revier ended up at 912 and was good enough for third place. I don't have any official results but Kevin Marsh won the event with a 1342 that was grown on his 1674 and crossed with the 1810 Stevens. It was a fun day and thanks for Apple Jacks Orchard for hosting the event as there were a ton of people at the event.   Thursday, September 29 View Page I opened up my 842 Steil 2011 which is the 980 Steil x 1810.5 Stevens (Chad Revier's Plant) and was suprised at the multi-colored seeds. I have had white seeds before and brown seeds before and brown seeds that had undeveloped white tips on them but these seeds are actually white and brown and are fully developed. Some were actually starting to grow. The 980 had huge brown seeds so it must be the 1810.5 that gave them color mixture. The pumpkin was grown on less than 250 sq ft of plant because of the hail, it went 6% heavy so not all bad when you take into account the year we had here. Thought it was kind of interesting though.