Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 41 Entries. Monday, June 8 View Page Spy pic. It's June and no standing water in the patch! WHHHOOOO HOOO!   Tuesday, June 23 View Page 2009 x 1832. Just a beautiful bloom.   Tuesday, June 30 View Page Looks like there's a good chance the WR coming back to WI this year?? :) I'd rather have this happen a bit earlier in the season. We are about 70% grown out now. I was probably only 20% grown out in 2010.   Tuesday, June 30 View Page 1756 Howell. This was the only pumpkin covered with a towel vs. a sheet. Therefore less hail damage to the baby. Just to fuel Garry's fire I think this one is like 8 days old?? :)   Tuesday, June 30 View Page 2058 Hawkley This pumpkin will be ugly as it sustained heavy hail damage. Generally my camera phone doesn't work, but today it decided to take some pics. I've never had 8 healthy and well ventilated plants at this point. I've never had 8 healthy (but somewhat dented) sets at this point. Let's hope for no more nasty storms and see what happens with several new "tricks" up the sleeve. My biggest secret by far is growing with a partner. By FAR.   Tuesday, June 30 View Page 1625 Gantner. This is our youngest plant by....10 days maybe? So this one will have the most good leaves. 3 sets hidden on that main vine. After this week all vines running to the sides will be terminated and we'll be on easy street running vines forward. Ahhhhh.   Tuesday, June 30 View Page Hard rain pic....   Tuesday, June 30 View Page 1756 pic....   Wednesday, July 8 View Page 1625 Gantner. "Slight" hail damage to leaf above. LOL. We ended up cutting off about half our sets due to hail damage. A couple of our new ones have minor damage. A couple of our original keepers have severe hail damage. However....we have 8 healthy root systems, 8 healthy plants worth of vines. And I have a secret weapon. Do you have a Hoppy?   Wednesday, July 15 View Page We've developed a much more extensive injection program this year. As the picture attached shows I've got it dialed in right to the ragged edge. This pumpkin is under 30 days old and I'm guessing could be doing much more than that per day in gains.   Thursday, July 16 View Page Here's our main manifold / injection system. We run drip through the entire patch. Our lines run 18" apart and we cover 7200 sqft. 4 zones. 2 automatic timers dedicated to 2 zones each. 4 injectors each dedicated to one zone each. This is a super effective yet very cost effective setup. We can set the timers and walk away. We add "stuff" to the injectors and walk away. Efficiency is very important to us.   Monday, July 27 View Page 2009 Wallace. The skin damage you see here is a result of rapid growth skin splits. There is no hail damage to this pumpkin. I have no idea what it measures or how old it is as I've been out west on vacation for a week. It must be about D30.   Tuesday, July 28 View Page So yesterday was D30 and now I know what it measures.   Thursday, July 30 View Page 1625 Gantner D30. 294 OTT. Nice and white just like we want! This is obviously a later set and therefore a bit faster grower out of the gate. Lots of growers get excited about rapid early growth including myself. The trouble is you can't have it all. Fast early = not much in September.   Thursday, July 30 View Page Pic?   Thursday, July 30 View Page Hail scars on 2058 Hawkley.   Monday, August 3 View Page We lost our 1832 due to a soft blossom nub. We didn't catch it on time....barely. I scraped through to good meat and later that the clean dry meat pin holed to the cavity. Ouch. This one was growing very very well and was our most aggressive plant from the start. The interior of the pumpkin was completely flawless and beautiful even thickness. Besides the obvious hail damage it was a beautiful white pumpkin just like we want.   Monday, August 3 View Page Stem shot with a little hail damage to the leaves :) I did retrieve the seeds from the pumpkin. They look nice and full. Reason being it was pollinated with our 2009.   Monday, August 10 View Page In the past I've been very good at avoiding blossom splits in most cases, but this looks like a classic BES to me. Ouch. This is the 1756 Howell est 1300#. The large scar on the right is the skin split from a previous entry. This one was going to be big. That's 2 big losses now. Double ouch.   Monday, August 10 View Page Competition pumpkins remaining: 886 1916 2058 1625 2009   Friday, August 14 View Page LL kindly took some nice pictures of the patch last night. Unfortunately while she was there we found not one, but TWO damaged pumpkins. We have now lost 3 pumpkins that in my experience would have all easily been personal bests by the tape.   Friday, August 14 View Page And we do have a story for "1781." John and I had planned to grow 1625 Gantner this year. Well John broke the first one off and I did the second...oops. Luckily enough LL gave us a back up 1781.....but never knew the second 1625 was broken. Therefore she assumed the 1625 was still 1625.....hehe....but not so easy to laugh about. Unfortunately during the photo session last night I spotted the tiniest pin hole I've ever seen in the blossom end. Upon further review I actually found that the blossom nub itself accepted a tiny blade of grass right up the middle. Therefore I can only assume this blossom nub has been "open" for a while causing the other tiny pin hole to develop as a rot spot. So not only did we find that hole last night, but I also let the cat out of the bag that her and I just found a tiny pin hole in a potential 2000# pumpkin.....on HER seed.   Friday, August 28 View Page So I've been a little quiet lately. Sandbagging? NO. In the last 10 days or so we have lost each of our top 4 pumpkins. First was 1832. Growing very very well. Probably on 2000ish pace. Second was the 1756. Third was the 1781 (former called 1625), and lastly....and the real dagger....was the 2009. 2009 was heading well clear of 2000. So within a short time we lost 4 pumpkins all heading around 2000 est. Ouch.....wouldacouldashoulda.....butdidn't. This will always be remembered as the season of "whatcouldabeen." Very very tough to take as I'm just not used to losing all my big stuff like this.   Friday, August 28 View Page So since we had the patch tour at our place this year and had had lost almost everything we caulked them up to try to keep them rolling. I didn't want to look like a complete failure with only TWO out of EIGHT plants still going....lol. Welcome to SPLITTSVILLE, WI.   Friday, August 28 View Page And yesterday the blossom of the 1756 as found to be getting soft. The caulking had held well, but it was time. No rot, but getting soft. Growth had gone close to zero. This hurts....this was probably going to be our #2 or #3 pumpkin. Est weight 1588. Actual weight on August 27th. 1744. Official weight 0.00. LOL. OUCH   Friday, August 28 View Page Here's a picture. Absolutely beautiful stem end.   Tuesday, September 1 View Page Annual first day of school pics. Amber 8. Where does the time go. She used to be smaller which made my pumpkins look bigger.....remember the elbow deep future world record picture of the 1161? The trouble is she's getting bigger and the pumpkins are getting smaller. This one is 1916 and has been her favorite since a baby. It's very wide and low and looks like it's got a lot of over the chart. Unfortunately this is our number 6 pumpkin growth wise.   Tuesday, September 1 View Page Here's Kailey now 11 with 2058 Hawkley. This pumpkin is gorgeous bright orange, but has a nice shelf and lots of big hail scars. Unfortunately this is our #5 grower and I'll remind that #1-4 are all DMG...or RIP. This one is also very very dense which is odd for so orange. If it's got some good % heavy it could still be pretty respectable.   Tuesday, September 1 View Page This is the one that took the wind from my sails. 2009 with my nieces and nephew. At D50 it was quite significantly ahead of the 2323 Meier and still doing 30's through D55. I thought we actually had a chance to compete within a few hundred pounds of Beni this year, but I should have known better :). It's slowed down a lot now probably due to the split being open a couple days while John and I were both away. Just a nice small classic BES. This is also a pretty darn solid pumpkin so will be interesting when we weigh it if it can display an error on my 2000# readout. I believe this pumpkin had it stayed healthy would have easily taped over 2000 est on the GPC chart. The power of the 2009 never ceases to amaze. Unbelievable. #butdidn't   Monday, September 21 View Page Weighed our 1781 at Chippewa this weekend. This pumpkin has 2 tiny pin holes in the blossom. Do not know how they deveoped. This was our "#4" grower.....and also appears it would have made 2000 had it stayed healthy.....UGH. I'd be a lot happier with 4 over 2000 than 0 close to 2000! This 1781 seed should make some noise as this pumpkin is a little peanut compared to others close by :) I hope people don't have a problem getting "chicked" at weigh-offs this year. FYI for those looking to contact me you can look at the GPC results. Scroll wayyyy down to the bottom and you will see that I've recently moved to a new city.   Monday, September 28 View Page Here's our 2058. Unfortunately our #1 now....lol. I'd estimate doing approximately 0.000# / day. +-. Cut off early due to the main got icky and we just wanted to clean out the patch early. This is the most beautiful red / orange pumpkin I've ever grown. It's crazy dark. Est is about 1550. Using my "best guess" I'd say it's about 1750 actual. LOL. We will see what the scale says on October 10th unless our not so great luck continues.   Monday, September 28 View Page Stem end. Shiny. I might actually have to wash and micro fiber this one. Crazy crazy pretty. Maybe get Shannon's blood pressure up a little for HD competition?   Tuesday, September 29 View Page John's neighbor having some fun with 1825 before pushing into the compost pile. He did this twice. Trying to smash the pumpkin. I don't know what this tractor weighs, but it's no compact tractor. Had the pumpkin not had needle holes in the blossom it would have been fit for official competition after propping the tractor like this. The fruit would squat, but not give way. Amazing.   Tuesday, September 29 View Page We also weighed out 2009 yesterday. It was right at 1900. 200# over est. As stated earlier I've been doing this long enough to have collected data as to how they will grow if allowed to finish out. And I have a couple pumpkins several miles away that were tracking pretty close to our 2009 that I can also use as reference....and they are still growing. My numbers still show this one should have ended up taping about 2100 on the GPC chart. Taping 2100 and 200+ over would have been pretty good darn it.   Saturday, October 3 View Page The past couple days have been amazing. Just 5 years ago we grew the first 1800# pumpkin and it was an outlier. Now 5 years later with nearly identical growing techniques I see multiple 2000# pumpkins in our state! Amazing. The genetics in these things are unlike anything else. Special congrats to Glen and Margaret Martin for the first WI soil weighed 2000# pumpkin. These 2 have put in their time and deserve it. Congrats to John Barlow for a new state record as he's been at it even longer.   Thursday, October 8 View Page 1579. Out of our 6 plants that "performed" we considered this one our "dud." When we pulled this plant we found out why. More root disease. The pumpkin grew well for a while then just slowed down much faster than it should. It's easy to slow down when there are no roots attached to the crown. Our 2058 was worse yet for disease pressure and we'll weigh that one this weekend.   Sunday, October 18 View Page Here's our 1710. All buffed up which paid off with the HD award. 1710....way heavy. And brilliant orange. I could tell all season this thing was heavy as it thumped like a rock. The plant was loaded with disease and we cut the fruit about 2 weeks early. Had we left it on we had a real shot at 1800. It just wasn't worth the potential of losing the pumpkin. Missing from the picture....is me! This was a personal best for John. But he wanted much much more.   Sunday, October 18 View Page BLATENT BRAG ALERT!!! I'm very very proud of this. Greatest weigh-off of all time by a lot. We even did a good job of scaring growers with pretty big stuff to other weigh-offs. Someday we'll get more folks to come play with the big boys....or in this case one of the best "girls" on the planet. I really want to put a shout out to the OVGPG. Tim, Alan, Quinn, Jerry, Dave x 2, Nick, and due to the narcotics I'm likely missing a few key directors and I apologize. Thanks for the push. We still consider you guys the group to beat and hopefully it can continue to be a nice rivalry moving forward. Of course thanks to our loyal sponsors. Steve, Ann, Ron, Neil. The support these folks have provided to this hobby is incredible. Many world records have come from these products. Neil's support to this hobby is unparalleled and though for some reason some growers STILL don't know it......so is his inoculant.   Sunday, October 18 View Page For now the torch is being passed. I can't imagine I'll never be back, but life happens and you never know. It's been a great run, but to be the best you have to have your head in it. That is no longer the case and hasn't been for a few years. Remember I was an endurance athlete first and pumpkin grower second. Losing our top 4 this year didn't make it any easier. So for now I'll do what I can to keep New Richmond and our local "girls power" at the top of the leader board. Though John and I had a tough couple seasons with some real bad luck it's been great watching close friend and neighbors carry the torch. Weighing a 2100# pumpkin right here......wow. Watching it grow all season.....incredible. Thumping it before picking it up KNOWING it was going OVER a ton. Crazy. Thanks as always to all my great friends. I truly appreciate all the support and being back in contact over the last week has been nice...and GREATLY appreciated at such a tough time.   Monday, October 19 View Page Just cause I've been getting a hard time about this I'll make it official. Hi, my name is Chris Stevens, DMG. I'm from Splittsville, Wi. The good news. Better to be a has been than never was :)   Thursday, October 22 View Page The big 3 having a great time in NYC with the GPC! Congrats again to Gene, Josiah, and your three time world champion Ron Wallace!