Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 38 Entries. Wednesday, May 15 View Page Having a patch tour in England and getting growing tips from one of the best...Ian Paton. Thanks very much Ian!   Friday, May 24 View Page A late start this year.   Tuesday, June 4 View Page Growing only 1 plant this year, a Love 892. As the story goes.... when we purchased this property 11 years ago, I was only "allowed" to grow every other year. I've grown 10 years in a row! The odd years being reserved for holidays. So this is a holiday year. It has given me a new appreciation for the huge amount of time we put into our hobby.   Tuesday, June 4 View Page Forgot the picture   Thursday, July 25 View Page The plant is a little on the small side as we have been travelling a bit this year and started late. The Love 892 was self pollinated on July 26th.   Saturday, July 27 View Page This is the important top secondary root. If you can promote the top secondary root you have , in effect, doubled your root system. Its the reason why you want to bury your vines with quite a bit of soil and keep it moist. More soil was added and watered to prevent this delicate root from drying out and dying.   Wednesday, July 31 View Page A simple and easy setup for feeding pumpkins with liquid and soluble fertilizers. Start with 1/2 HP pump with an inlet and an outlet. The ferts are mixed in the garbage can. Just place the inlet hose into the garbage can, turn on the pump and spray the ferts with an ordinary hose and nozzle.   Wednesday, August 14 View Page 892 Love DAP 20 It's 69 " circ. This is the 2nd largest circ at DAP 20 since I've been growing. Should name this kin " got lucky". It was the first female to show up on the main vine at 10 ft. Four more females after that did not "take" and there were no backups!!!   Monday, August 19 View Page I'm diarizing my "new" method of vine burying inspired by the Patons who cover each axial with a pot of very wet soil. We know that each axial will produce a secondary root coming from the bottom of the vine. The Patons have managed to grow roots out of the top as well, literally doubling the number of secondary roots. My method was to heavily cover each vine so that the top root will have soil to grow in. My burying soil has been pure compost from the local municipal composting facility.   Monday, August 19 View Page Usually I'm on my hands and knees burying vines. With the "new" method I'm using a long handled shovel and that makes it so that I don't need to bend down so much. Much easier on the back.   Monday, August 19 View Page Now the only thing left to do is to really saturate the vine burying soil to promote the top roots to form. The other reason that the vine burying soil needs to be quite deep is to block out ant light which also promotes top root formation. as you can see in the picture, I'm using a long handled spray nozzle. Again this has been much easier on my back. Soak the vine burying soil a lot. With the Patons' knowledge of plants , I have been able to produce more top roots than ever in the past.   Monday, August 19 View Page If you have been following my diary you will know that I started a month late. Growing 1 plant is a treat. 4 plants is work. I've gotta believe that my plant and pumpkin are doing so well because of this "new" easier vine burying technique.   Monday, August 19 View Page This years' plant has been 1 of the "cleanest". So far no PM or aphids. One of the techniques I've been doing is to trim out over-lapping leaves. The leaf in the shade will always get more PM than the one on top. The other is to alternate, every other week, insecticide and fungicide. In 49 days I've applied 3 insecticides and 3 fungicides. Now all we need is a little luck !   Saturday, August 24 View Page LOVE 892 on DAP 30. OTT 259   Tuesday, August 27 View Page My experiment with the pumpkin patch. As with many of you, I have a weed problem. I took this year off pumpkins to grow weeds. In the spring I let all the weeds germinate and then killed them with my "organic" herbicide. After the weeds died I did a shallow cultivation and watered the patch. This will be the 4th, and probably the last set of weeds to be germinated. Next month I will plant the usual fall rye cover crop. Will have to wait until next year to see if the experiment worked or was a huge time waster.   Tuesday, September 3 View Page Another beautiful morning in the patch. Love 892 on DAP 40...OTT 311   Sunday, September 8 View Page LOVE 892 on DAP 45.....OTT 333" or 848 lbs (2017 chart).   Friday, September 13 View Page Love 892 on DAP 50 OTT 357 inches. This pumpkin now holds 2 personal records. 1) fastest growing and 2) most gain in Sept. Looks the same except more orange and bigger.   Monday, September 16 View Page Had a few excited visitors.   Monday, September 16 View Page Do you think this kin has ever heard of gravity?...lol   Monday, September 16 View Page Some people have been asking me what I use to fertilize and foliar feed my plant. My setup is a garbage can, pump, hose and nozzle. The pump is 1 Hp from amazon and the rest could be found lying around the house.   Monday, September 16 View Page This pic goes with the last entry.   Monday, September 16 View Page This shows how far the nozzle sprays. It sort of doesn't look like it but I can spray as far as the pumpkin. So basically I can do the whole patch from 2 positions. Btw I use the same set up this year for insecticides and fungicides. As of today I do not have any bugs or powdery mildew.   Tuesday, September 17 View Page Just for fun I washed off the soil covering the vines. Its very obvious that an extra root is growing out of the top of the vine at each node. So doubling the root system has got to help a pumpkin grow bigger. At DAP 50 the kin weighs over a thousand pounds. The fastest any of my pumpkins has ever grown and still growing.   Wednesday, September 18 View Page Love 892 on DAP 55....Ott 360. Color is right but I don't think the shape will qualify for a HD...lol.   Monday, September 23 View Page Love 892 on DAP 60...Ott 374. Pumpkin looks the same but bigger. I should take a picture of the leaves....not 1 spot of PM or 1 tiny insect hole in the whole patch!!   Monday, September 23 View Page I still can't believe the plant and leaves are in such good shape this late in the season !!!   Saturday, October 5 View Page What a beautiful day at the Krause Berry Farm! And this was the year I was ordered to leave the pumpkin patch alone and go on holidays....no summer holidays for 10 years ...lol.   Saturday, October 5 View Page My biggest cheerleader ! This pumpkin is only 70 days old...1202 lbs. It was the easiest pumpkin I've ever grown with the least amount of work. DAP 1 was July 26th and harvested on Oct 3rd. Sometimes less is more. In our area the largest pumpkin recorded is a Carley 1543.   Monday, October 7 View Page This top root is the result of a visit with Ian Paton in Lymington England this spring. We always knew there was a root growing down from each leaf node but the Patons have been teaching us that there is also a root growing out of the top of the node thereby doubling the number of roots feeding the pumpkin. To achieve this you must bury the vines with a higher and larger amount of soil. In my case I used pure compost from the local landfill fortified with mycorrhizae.   Monday, October 7 View Page Amazingly I did not use any NPK type fertilizers on this plant as I was trying to "use up" all my old plant boosters and growth enhancers. Mycorrhrizae, Solubor, Liquid Kelp, Cal Mag Max and Companion. (CalMag is 7-0-3, so it does have a little N and K but it was used mainly to add calcium and magnesium).   Monday, October 7 View Page The other amazing feature of growing this year was the total absence of insects and powdery mildew. Someone (I'm sorry I forgot who it was) posted on "Diaries" their regimen of insecticides and fungicides to achieve disease free plants. His method was to alternate applications of insecticides and fungicides every week. Also, for heavy infestations of PM, as I have, you must use 3 different classes of fungicide due the fact that PM can become resistant to 1 type very quickly. The 3 different fungicides were Bravo, Cabrio and Eagle. CHEERS!...until next year   Monday, October 7 View Page But WAIT!!...there's more. One growth enhancer I forgot to mention, and it's at the top of the list, is Growth Products' "Essential 1-0-1. The other 2 things to do at time of planting is a 1/2 bag of ProMix with mycorrhizae dug into a 6 ft circle at the planting site and a 4 cu ft bag of Perlite per 100 sq ft growing area mixed into the soil.   Tuesday, October 8 View Page This is for next year. A fall rye cover crop. 2 lbs per 100 sq ft. Rolling seeds into the soil by driving lawn mower over the seeds gives a better germination rate.   Tuesday, October 8 View Page Covering rye seeds with ReMay does 2 things. It prevents my pumpkin patch from becoming a giant bird feeder. It also gives some protection to the cold weather which has arrived already. Last 2 days have had our first bout of frost.   Tuesday, October 15 View Page I week after sowing and under ReMay we very nice germination.   Saturday, October 19 View Page A nice visit to Vancouver Island and the weigh off at Farmers Market in Duncan. Organized by Glenn Dixon it proved to be very successful with one grower, Joe, breaking the thousand pound barrier and Cindy weighing a pumpkin at 1544 lbs. Too bad it was a little cold and rainy. And then when it was time to go home the sun broke out for a beautiful afternoon. The largest ferry can carry 470 cars and over 2000 passengers !! More amazingly it can be unloaded and then reloaded in 15 minutes !!   Sunday, October 20 View Page This is 12 days after sowing. You can see the difference between the covered and uncovered seeds.