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Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 11 Entries.
Saturday, June 26 View Page
from today...
 
Sunday, June 27 View Page
Catch up: planted seeds in early April. Sprouts began to appear April 14. Some crapped out, so I got more seeds and started the second round of seeds in early May. Transplanted sprouts from 4”x4” pots to a 5’-diameter kiddie pool in mid May. Used many bags of raised bed potting soil and mixed in blood meal. Started adding some weird “fish shit juice” from my husband's aquaponics friend about a week ago. It was some sort of sorcery. They are GROWING! Current: I have six kiddie pools of giant pumpkin plants in my driveway. Three have a lone plant because I learned my lesson. One contains two plants, one of which has the monster vine of the “farm”…it’s about 6-foot, thick and firm and has serving tray sized leaves and buds! One pool has three plants…longest vine there is about 8 feet. One has five plants. I made the mistake (?) of naming them…which did encourage me to take better care of them but wayyyy too hard to eliminate underperformers. I need to learn to be more ruthless. Video is from this morning. Doing what I can with the space I have ??
 
Tuesday, July 13 View Page
The plant I sat on 7/4 is bouncing back well. Things are still super angry that I sprayed full strength neem oil on them (I am an idiot). But they're surviving and even thriving. This week there was an explosion of males blooming. As I had been nipping off female buds due to inopportune locations, only 5 or 6 female flowers were blooming on the total 11 plants. I still can't figure out how to post photos. My last one was an accidental alignment of mistakes! I've tried assisting with pollinating a few and have left the job to the bees on the rest. So far so good...I think.
 
Thursday, July 15 View Page
We'll see... 5 days since pollination. Of course the one in the most inopportune spot looks the best. LOL
 
Friday, July 16 View Page
let's see if this photo posts...
 
Friday, July 23 View Page
She's big enough to bend the dinky trellis at 13 days after pollination, so I put in a makeshift support. The t-shirt sling was working, but it was only a matter of time before the whole thing would collapse. My husband was voicing way more concern than I was feeling! There are currently baby pumpkins "of significant stature" (in my newbie eyes) on six of my plants! It's so exciting! Unfortunately, only one is kind of near the ground. I may need to start dismantling the trellises. Older foliage is looking pretty crappy...largely due to my brilliant full-strength neem oil application. But the kiddie pools also don't offer much in the way of soil/nutrient storage or transmission. We shall see how far I can get with my hoopty set-up :) We've been having a rodent issue in our yard, but they've kept away from the pumpkins so far. They prefer the apple tree, eggplant blossoms, strawberries, new foliage on the lemon tree, and my flower garden. Traps have been set. No mercy.
 
Friday, July 23 View Page
I need to get on a better support system for this one.
 
Sunday, August 22 View Page
Sad state of affairs here in my hanging driveway pumpkin patch. First of all, the big lesson for this noob...do not plant more than one plant in a kiddie pool and expect things to thrive. Also, the vine on the trellis and pumpkins hanging up in the air... not horrible but, as I am sure the experienced folk knew, not the shiniest idea in the jewel box. So where are we? The pumpkin that was grown alone is doing pretty okay (meaning: it's not fully dead yet). It has reached 42" in circumference and is pretty heavy. It is also on a platform about 4' off the ground and most of the leaves that still are on the vine are in really bad shape. The pumpkin that was growing 2-to-a-pool really took off. It was a little late to bloom but is now 39" circumference. It has the best developed and longest vine of all 25 of my original plants (yeah...i was overzealous). The best thing that ever happened to this plant was its poolmate totally crapped out so I cut it out.
 
Sunday, August 22 View Page
In the pool that had five plants (hahahahahahah...what was i thinking?) one plant still lives and its pumpkin is kicking ass. Even though it is located at the TOP of the trellis, it is now 34" circumference and sits atop a ladder. The leaves are scant and could hardly be called green, but it still lives. The pumpkins that were stuck 9 (yes, NINE) in a pool...well, I am sure you can guess. I cut out 6 of them and the remaining three are just there because I am a "never-give-up' kind of girl. There is a new pumpkin on one of these. All the others aborted fairly early on (fist-sized). This one is now larger than a softball. My two later-planted vines are doing pretty well in terms of greenery and flowers, but they are just late to the game, for sure. In addition to the way-too-small living space/kiddie pool, I got hit with a rousing case of powdery mildew. I sprayed with neem oil, but I really couldn't keep up. I hope the three pumpkins still hanging tough make it a few more weeks. We shall see. I don't think I'm going to get a pumpkin as big as a car this year :( But all three I have are bigger than my head, so I've got that going for me which is nice :)
 
Tuesday, August 24 View Page
Maybe from chin to top it looks less big, but my head is only 23" in circumference and this baby is 33"in this photo. I'm going with "as big as my head" on this. Such a sad state of affairs over here. Every day, I'm removing more either crusty or wilted foliage. So thankful for the three babies still hanging in there and appearing to grow.
 
Saturday, September 18 View Page
All of you are amazing. I got so disheartened when the powdery mildew got into full throttle mode. I totally lost steam. That said, I have two that got over 40" in circumference and probably weigh over 20 lbs (I really have no idea...they are both bigger than pumpkins I would normally buy for jack o'lanterns). I let one of the hanging ones just dangle to see how long it would last. It grew to 25" in circumference and about 7 lbs. The vine was SO strong! It finally dropped to the ground today. It was the pumpkin/stem junction that gave out. I will try to take a photo of all the runty pumpkins I produced. I don't think anything is growing any larger than it currently is. To amuse myself through the waning weeks, I created a tiktok account for my pumpkins. Pairing pumpkins to popular music really annoyed my husband, but my kids found it hilarious. Here's to next year! I am excited to apply the knowledge and experience I have gained. One day....as big as a CAR!
 

 

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