Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 43 Entries. Sunday, January 1 View Page Happy New Year! May all of you grow a new PB in 2012 (at least those who´d like to do that).   Sunday, April 22 View Page This was about a month ago, a great start of pumpkin season 2012. Visited pipster at his place and did enjoy a look at his orange beauty which set a new Victoria record.   Sunday, April 22 View Page Because of migration a while ago I haven´t had too much time for patch prep. Anyway, weather is getting nice and some work got done within the past couple of days...looks like some great seedlings will hit the patch this year. Before they do that, here´s a big THANKS to all of you who sent me some of your great seeds (Jeff, Mark, Dale, Pap & Ron, Joe, Chad, Jim, Bob, Peter and Luke). All bubbles arrived, none got lost and none got robbed. I´ll keep you guys updated when one of your seeds hits the patch (which should happen within the next couple of years, cannot grow all of them this year).   Thursday, April 26 View Page Plant A and plant B ready to hit the patch.   Thursday, May 3 View Page Because of the nice weather forecast we´ve had for the last week I had decided to plant some more AG seedlings on April 29th, even though the plants still had some room in the pot. Planted D and D' on the same site, 3 ft from each other, and in a few weeks I will see which one will stay and which one will have to go.   Thursday, May 10 View Page It´s a very sunny and warm day today, excellent for taking pictures. Done. Plant A looks best, starts developing a main vine. Plant B, also very strong, has very short internodes. Hope it won´t turn into a multiple vine or ribbon vine. Plant C doesn´t show an internode between the 2nd and the 3rd true leaf (but they didn´t grow at the same time, it isn´t a characteristic double-leaf). Hope it will continue with some internodes soon. Just in case, I´ve set a backup plant (C') next to it, but I honestly hope that I can keep plant C and won´t see the need for the backup in 2 weeks. Plant D is still in the fleece tunnel, not as strong as its backup plant D'. Will probably go with D', but still waiting for another few weeks.   Monday, May 14 View Page We´ve had a cold night last night, pretty frosty (-3°C, 27°F), but fortunately I had my little plants covered with instantly built cold frames. They survived! Wanted to get rid of some compacted soil at about 1 m from the plants (haven´t used boards this year yet) and noticed that plants A and B already have some roots of at least 1.5 m length. From now on I´ll try to not dig in the soil within 2 m distance to the plant.   Monday, May 21 View Page Time for an update. The plants are looking fine, and it seems to turn out good that I had planted the back-up D', it continues to be stronger than plant D. Will watch them for another couple of days before making a final decision. Also, have installed some weeping hose, should make the watering much easier this year.   Sunday, May 27 View Page Some new pictures today. Plant A has awesome leaves, whereas plant B prefers to put more emphasis on main vine growth.   Monday, June 4 View Page A new week, a new picture update. Plants A and B are significantly bigger than the others, but only a couple of days ahead (C, D and D´ were sown about a week later). Bloody cold weather here during the past couple of days has decelerated the plants, what a pity. In two days summer should attempt to come back again (according to forecast, but we´ll need to see what happens). Have removed the C-backup, because C is now growing without causing any troubles. Still keeping D and D´ side by side. D´ is stronger and longer and has larger leaves, but seems to develop a ribbon vine. D started as a pretty weak plant, but seems to grow at the same rate as D´ now, with a nicely shaped main vine. Will let them do for another 4 or 5 days, but then I need to make a final decision before growing a jungle on that site.   Monday, June 11 View Page Plant update! Plants are growing nicely, and A and B have developed a long back main...in the pictures the letters indicate the direction of the main vine. I´ll use a couple of nodes of the back main to fill the area in the back of the plant. Yesterday I made the decision that D had to leave, and D´ can stay on my patch. Until 4 days ago the decision wouldn´t have been as easy, but D did continue to stay behind D´, and D´ is now growing a nicely round shaped main vine, and furthermore some wind damage to D (the stump was slightly twisted) made the decision easier.   Tuesday, June 12 View Page Today I removed the first little female from a secondary of my plant A, and just out of curiosity I opened the little thing, and it looked like a beautiful six-lobe. Then, I made a cross-section through the little fruit, and I was surprized that it was a real six-lobe with beautiful symmetry of the rows of seeds (some six-lobes I had cross-cut previously had turned out having been five-plus, which means that one of the six lobes was way smaller than the other five, and this did show up as an asymmetry of the rows of seeds in the cross-section). Hope that this plant will continue this habit of throwing out six-lobe females with marvellous symmetry.   Thursday, June 28 View Page First pollination today (a beautiful 5-lobe female on plant C with pollen from plant B). Well, plant C developed this female at 9.5 ft, and somewhere in the ancestry of this plant this position had turned out successful...never thought that I would want to grow one so close to the stump, but in this particular case it is pretty tempting.   Saturday, June 30 View Page Yesterday I did the pollination on the 2nd plant...it was plant B and got pollinated with stuff from plant A. This 4-lobe is at about 11.5 ft.   Tuesday, July 3 View Page Time for another pollination. Today: Plant A at 14.5 ft (with pollen from plant C), a nice 4-lobe female (...unfortunately, not the 6-lobe I was hoping for).   Thursday, July 5 View Page Now, after about one week, I´m pretty sure that the females on plants C (top) and B (bottom) have taken the pollination. Also shown, the numbers of days after pollination.   Thursday, July 5 View Page This morning it was time for the first pollination of a female on plant D (with pollen from plant C). Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me to the patch (it was a 4-lobe female). Therefore, here´s only an afternoon picture. The main vine of this plant is pretty thick, and it resists my attempts of getting it bent into an S-curve like shape, even though it was quite warm this afternoon. Hence, I´ll probably have to think about another strategy of getting vines out of the way of this fruit.   Thursday, July 5 View Page This happened about a week ago. It´s not a disease, it´s just a result of sunscald. Two weeks ago weather was pretty cool and cloudy, and a week ago we suddenly had some very sunny and hot days. Systematically, on most vines the 3rd or 4th leaf immediately suffered sunscald, whereas the younger leaves and the older leaves didn´t. Probably because those 3rd or 4th leaves have grown most of their leaf surface "in the dark", thus being particularly sensitive. I´m happy that only parts of the leaves died and some parts of the sugar factory kept working...and now that´s what they look like after a couple of days.   Friday, July 6 View Page Not the best day today. Patch got hit by a little hailstorm. Well, plants still look better than I thought, but definitely worse than without the icy shower.   Friday, July 13 View Page Fruit update. The pumpkins on plants A and D´ are behind the development of the other two at this stage, but I don´t worry, they look at least as good as some of my 2011 pumpkins at this stage. Now there will be some cold next five days or so (nights even colder, brrrrrrrr), I better don´t expect too much growth.   Friday, July 13 View Page Fruit C is now big enough to become attractive to the marten, therefore I set up the protective net. I also need to do that with fruit B, but still don´t know if it will be the keeper.   Tuesday, July 24 View Page On 4 plants I have 5 fruit going now. Each plant has a fruit set on the main vine. Something had happened to the fruit of plant D', it might be marten damage, although the scars look different from what I have seen before. Fortunately, I also had pollinated another one on the same day on a secondary vine of that plant. It might become an orange beauty, but it isn´t growing as fast as the one on the main vine. It´s "Beauty and the Beast" on the same plant, and therefore I will probably let them continue simultaneously...to look, to see and to learn. Because of the pollination on the same day it will be interesting to follow their OTT growth patterns, i.e., if there are different peak growth days for the main vine and the secondary vine fruit.   Tuesday, July 24 View Page That´s what I have done to the vine at the pumpkin of plant A. The pumpkin had a short stem, and the angle wasn´t as nice as I wished it could have been, and the main vine refused my attempts of bending it into an S-curve (it was pretty cold weather around pollination time), but I wanted to let the vine continue. Now, that´s what I have done: I have terminated the true main vine a node after the pumpkin and I have chosen the secondary of this node to continue as the new main vine. I suppose it won´t bring about the full advantage of a nice S-curve of a main vine, but at least I didn´t have to terminate vine growth at the pumpkin.   Wednesday, August 1 View Page Beware of plant A, I don´t know what this funny nose wants to to tell me. Maybe "Don´t touch me, I´ll bite you (if only I could...grrrrrr)!"   Wednesday, August 1 View Page ...and here´s the set of new pictures of my pumpkins.   Tuesday, August 14 View Page Time for a new picture, the pumpkins grow and therefore there´s only room for 3 of them on this pic, LOL. No, plant D' still carries 2 pumpkins, an ugly one on the main vine and a pretty one on a secondary. Plant D' has become my main-secondary-comparison project, the two females were pollinated on the same day, and now I monitor their daily gains to find out if there are significant differences in the growth curves of main vine and secondary vine pumpkins of the same plant.   Tuesday, August 28 View Page Last week was a sad week, on Friday I had to get my fruit C off the patch. Sad, sad, sad, it was the best grower in the patch...as one would expect from a 1789 Wallace.   Tuesday, August 28 View Page It had a little blossom end split, and the area around the split started to get soft. The only things I could do were: 1) I had to get it on my inline scales. It was 322 kg (710 lbs). Now this is the 710 (uow, dmg) Wagler 2012. 2) I had to have a closer look at the plant.   Tuesday, August 28 View Page This was a beautiful stump...quite big, but not as fat as if it would have made me worry about increased risk of a visit by "Mr. Foamy"   Tuesday, August 28 View Page Then I dug out some random leaf nodes...four along the main vine (left) and four from different secondaries (right). It is amazing to see the systematically different development of the tap roots.   Tuesday, August 28 View Page ...and one of them had a really freaky feature: There was a little root growing inside a leaf stalk.   Tuesday, August 28 View Page Then I got the pumpkin off the styrofoam, and I noticed that I must have disturbed a little visitor...who needs to look for a new home now. (Funny, I just found a similar story in another diary. Seems like giant pumpkins are great homes for all kinds of rodents.)   Tuesday, August 28 View Page ...and as in the other grower´s diary, my "pumpkin mouse" also just used this pumpkin as a giant roof and did not attempt to get inside. Finally, when I cut it open I found a good number of nice seeds which look fine, and upon drying I´ll do some viability tests. Thanks Ron and Pap for the opportunity to grow a plant off a 1789 seed.   Wednesday, August 29 View Page ...and today was a day when I just had to go to the patch and to say "Next pleeeeaaaase!", and there we go...the main vine fruit of plant D' (it´s the 1349 Sherwood, thank you Jim for the seed which grew an awesome plant with giant leaves and this rock-like fruit) said "Yeah, here I am, with something itchy around my stem, so what can we do?", and the only support I could offer was to save its next generation, because this stem split reached into the cavity.   Wednesday, August 29 View Page ...and so I went ahead with my operation and got the seeds out of that pumpkin. Look at the walls...and now you need to look closer to find the cavity in the fruit. Not suprising that it went 21.4% heavy. Clearly, the McKie genetics have left a significant trace (1349 Sherwood is 1502 Wallace x 1041.5 McKie). Now this is the 496 (uow, dmg) Wagler 2012 (1349 Sherwood x 1789 Wallace). There weren´t plenty of seeds in the pumpkin, but there should be some for those who are interested in growing this cross of (heavy x best grower in my patch). In addition to these traits which hopefully went into that cross, the 1789 Wallace plant and the 1349 Sherwood plant were the two out of my four plants which had the smallest amount of deformed female flowers, most females were perfect 4- and 5-lobers with a round or slightly long baby-pumpkin and a long stem (whereas plants A and B had a higher fraction of deformed females, i.e. with less symmetric lobes and seeds in the flower, and the females of plants A and B always had a very short stem).   Sunday, September 16 View Page Time for a new picture with my two favorites, on plant A (left) and plant B (right), still in one piece and still growing.   Saturday, September 29 View Page Yes, tomorrow will be weigh-off in Görlitz...and what am I doing here and now?...nothing better than just posting a pic of a carrot. Thanks to the EGVGA seed package I had sown some giant carrot seeds and had put some of the seedlings into my pumpkin patch. One of the results is this little boy (it´s a boy, isn´t it?!).   Thursday, October 18 View Page This is my 677.7 Wagler 2012, the cross is 1176 Lombardi x 1789 Wallace. It was my 2nd pumpkin (therefore an EXH) at the weigh-off in Görlitz (Germany). Thank you Mark for the seed.   Thursday, October 18 View Page This is my 929.5 Wagler 2012 (official weight, weigh-off in Görlitz on Sept. 30th), the cross is 1723 Marshall x 1176 Lombardi. Thank you Dale for the seed. According to the weigh-off organizers the pumpkin was 11-ish % heavy (I need to point out that this probably refers to the old chart, at least my own OTT-measurements indicated similar % heavy with respect to the old chart). As soon as I noticed its weight (929.5 lbs) I found it a pity that I haven´t let the pumpkin grow for another half day, because then it could have reached the 931 lbs...the weight of Dale Marshalls pumpkin off his 1723 seed (what a funny coincidence this would have been). Thanks to the 1723 Marshall plant I achieved a new PB this year (well, the 929.5 isn´t much heavier than my 907 from last year, but it was grown in 92 days, whereas my 907 was 107 days old, and this year weather conditions were worse than last year).   Thursday, October 18 View Page The result of the 1723 Marshall (which became my 929.5 Wagler, which went heavy) makes me feel happy about the cross of my 710 (dmg, uow) Wagler 2012, which went down in August after some blossom end problems. The cross of my 710 (which went some % light) is 1789 Wallace x 1723 Marshall, and because of this pollinator there could be some "heavy-genetics" in the cross now.   Thursday, October 18 View Page This week I had killed my 677.7 Wagler (1176 Lombardi x 1789 Wallace). The blossom end looks fine, not the thickest, but not too thin either. The seed count was pretty poor.   Thursday, October 18 View Page These are the growth curves [(weight in kg) vs. (day after pollination)] of my two biggest pumpkins 2012. During the season I could only monitor the growth curves derived from OTT measurements, and it looked like the 1723 Marshall was way behind the 1789 Wallace, but after I knew the final weights of the pumpkins, I had done the percentage (heavy or light) correction, and now it looks like the 1723 Marshall revealed a performance which was much closer to that of the 1789 Wallace (nevertheless, the corrected growth curves still indicate the 1789 as my best grower this year...until it died).   Monday, November 12 View Page This is the 929.5 Wagler 2012 (1723 Marshall x 1176 Lombardi). Nice thick walls, and a good seed count.