Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 62 Entries. Thursday, March 7 View Page A couple days ago one of my pumpkin growing friends asked me if I was going to do a diary this year. I replied, “Heck no! I want to spend my time growing bigger pumpkins, not writing about the work I’m doing growing them.” But today as I was working in my patch, I started thinking of things which actually would make doing a diary interesting (to me AND the other people reading it). Now I find myself making my first 2024 diary entry. Funny how that happens sometimes. I’m not sure if I should thank my friend, Jeff, or block his number from my phone.   Thursday, March 7 View Page My first thought was to document the accumulation of dirt on my hands as the season progresses. While I will do this, on its own it probably isn’t enough to make this an interesting read.   Thursday, March 7 View Page I grew a cover crop of mustard in my greenhouse this year with the hope that it will supress disease.   Thursday, March 7 View Page When I started to realize low long it was going to take me to plow it in by going back & forth over a small area to really chop it up and then water it heavily before moving on to another section, I had the thought of why not keep a log of how many hours I spend in my patch this season here in my diary?   Thursday, March 7 View Page I was following this painfully slow plow-then water-then plow-then water pattern because I could think of no better way considering that I had been told that a significant part of the stuff that will kill the bad buys in my soil will “gas off” in the first 20 minutes the mustard is chopped up.   Thursday, March 7 View Page Six hours later, after obsessing on what a waste of time this was, I had another thought: why not use my diary to create a “Crowd Sourcing Forum” to get other people’s ideas on why we do the things we do???? Now I actually do think that is an interesting idea! And thanks to the new “diary comments” it is actually possible here on bigpumpkins.com!   Thursday, March 7 View Page As I kept plowing & watering I kept having visions of mustard gas from World War I wafting across no-man’s-land into the enemy trenches killing the bad guys. Yet I saw no deadly mustard gas doing its job of killing the bad guys lurking in my soil. And the first 20 minutes were supposedly the most important!   Thursday, March 7 View Page Meanwhile, my hands just kept getting dirtier. And I kept wondering if the idea of “it being super important to water it enough during this critical first 20 minutes so the soil will form a crust which will trap the gas so it will hang around & kill the bad guys” was really just a load of crap that had been passed down from grower to grower, and eventually to me??? What do you think? I’m going to do a little research & see if I can learn something…or if someone out there who actually has some factual information on how this works, that would be even better!   Thursday, March 7 View Page I also have been told that the best time to plow in your cover crop is just as it starts to bloom because that is when it has the highest levels of nutrients & is most beneficial for your soil. What do you think?   Thursday, March 7 View Page I think the real reason to plow in a cover crop just before it begins flowering in full force, is because once it flowers & is pollinated you get lots of unwanted seeds which just get plowed into your patch. What do you think?   Thursday, March 7 View Page Anyway, after my first day of actual labor in my patch I have officially logged 6 hours & 21 minutes in my quest of growing pumpkins that I hope will end up bigger than this one, which won last year at Elk Grove.   Tuesday, March 12 View Page I’ve done some “internet research” & found a University of Michigan report which provides an understandable explanation of how “mustard fumigation” works: “the process works as so: when plant cells are damaged such as by chopping, glucose plates are released and come in contact with an enzyme (myrosinase). In the presence of water, the reaction produces the natural gas isothiocyanate (ITC). ITC is responsible for the suppressive effects of the practice.”   Thursday, March 28 View Page Last fall I added 20 yards of composted green waste to my patch.   Thursday, March 28 View Page I also added 20 bags of composted chicken manure. This was the first time I’ve added any manure compost to my patch since moving to Eugene.   Thursday, March 28 View Page I will be using TerraTrove MT-17 which is a biological product that helps convert organics such as manure & compost into readily available nutrients for plants. It is one of the products Travis used last year in growing his world record. Ron Root also used it & had fantastic results too.   Thursday, March 28 View Page I’ve been getting my heating cables ready to go.   Thursday, March 28 View Page I zip tie the cables to a piece of wire fencing. By doing this it makes it possible to dig them up & re-use them the next year. Any that I have ever buried without the fence wire were destroyed when I dug them up!   Thursday, March 28 View Page This year I will bury them with the zip ties up toward the top of the soil which I hope will make it easier to locate them when it comes time to dig them up next fall.   Thursday, March 28 View Page As you may know, Dave Chan set a 300+ pound personal best with his 2212 which won the Hard Rock Weighoff in California last fall.   Thursday, March 28 View Page If you followed Dave’s diary last year you were aware that he used CO2 for the first time last year. At the lunch after Half Moon Bay I sat with Dave & his wife, Janet. While we were sitting there I asked Dave what he did different this year & he responded “Nothing really.” Then Janet jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow & said, “What do you mean? You used CO2!” Thanks for keeping him honest Janet! This is a pic of his CO2 setup from his 2023 diary.   Thursday, March 28 View Page Dave’s success & big jump in his personal best led me down the path of obsessing & learning about CO2 over the winter. Our atmosphere contains about 380-400 ppm of C02. It is a fact that the ideal CO2 level for most plants (including giant pumpkins) is between 750-1200 ppm.   Thursday, April 4 View Page For the past week I have been hard at work amending my patch. I think my dog, Cleo, is the only one who likes the process of adding amendments. She loves to run around like a wild animal in the freshly tilled soil. She really loves rolling around in kelp meal, and she REALLY loves eating blood meal. I'm glad she likes it, because I hate it!   Thursday, April 4 View Page I have two separate growing areas. This is the soil test for my patch in my neighbor's (the Putnam's) backyard. I like the 6.7 pH! I don't like the super-high numbers for Potassium and Magnesium. I also don't like the ratio of Calcium to Magnesium in the CEC. My organic matter is on the high-side as well, but my patch is well-drained & is a sandy loam, so I have been pretty much disease-free in the three years I have grown in this patch.   Thursday, April 4 View Page This is the soil test form my greenhouse which is located in my back yard, probably 75 meters away from the "Putnam Patch." Overall the test results are quite similar to the results from the Putnam Patch. The organic matter percentage is a little lower, which makes sense because I added about 20 yards of green waste to the Putnam Patch last fall.   Thursday, April 4 View Page I am a big believer in the Langley Soil Calculator. For the last 8 years or so I have sent my soil test results to Cecil Weston & he has run them through the calculator for me. I have had great success in the years when I have closely followed his recommendations for amendments. Here are his recommendations for the Putnam Patch.   Thursday, April 4 View Page ...and these are Cecil's recommendations for my greenhouse.   Thursday, April 4 View Page To get my ratios where they need to be I need a LOT of gypsum. 3500 pounds of gypsum! In the past couple of years I've added between 1000-1500 pounds of gypsum each year. At about $12 per 50 pound bag the 3500 pounds of gypsum would cost $840! Cecil suggested that I find a place that I could buy it in bulk totes. So I did, and ended up paying $100/ton. Cecil is the best!   Thursday, April 4 View Page You haven't lived until you've spread 3500 pounds of gypsum by hand.   Thursday, April 4 View Page I spent about six hours spreading gypsum in my greenhouse and another five hours spreading it in the Putnam Patch. I guess I got better at it on the second day.   Thursday, April 4 View Page Then I tilled it in.   Thursday, April 4 View Page Luckily the clearance for my tractor is almost exactly the same as my height. I built an enclosure for the purpose of containing CO2 inside my greenhouse & it is just tall enough so I can walk underneath it without bending over. I left the ends open to make doing my amendments easier. When it came time to till in the amendments I was relieved that my tractor would fit too! Usually the only luck I have is BAD LUCK. Maybe this is a good sign!   Thursday, April 4 View Page This is what my alfalfa meal, kelp meal, & blood meal looked like before being tilled in. You can also see my CO2 enclosure, which is not closed up completely yet. The reason for the enclosure is to decrease the area/volume where the supplemental CO2 will be used.   Thursday, April 4 View Page One of the things I like most about growing giant pumpkins is doing the work. I love the process of executing a plan over several months. One part that I DON'T like is mixing & incorporating micro-nutrients into my patch as part of the soil amending process. But I do it anyway. One thing that makes it fun is taking and using things from the kitchen which my wife thinks are hers. This whisk is an awesome kitchen utensil which can be used for growing pumpkins if your wife does not find out.   Thursday, April 4 View Page Micronutrients like Boron (Borax), Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Ferris Sulfate, etc. generally are added in small quantities & need to be mixed with something to create enough "mass" to cover your entire patch evenly.   Thursday, April 4 View Page I mix my micronutrients with bagged sand. I use a stainless steel measuring cup to measure them out & my wife's favorite whisk to mix them up. If I do it when she is at work she'll never find out!   Thursday, April 4 View Page My final mix of the micro-nutrients is pouring the blend back & forth between a couple plastic flip-top bins several times, just to make sure everything is distributed evenly. I wear a mask when I mix this stuff. I hate wearing masks. Maybe it is needing to wear a mask that makes me not like doing my soil amendments?   Thursday, April 4 View Page I just had dinner with my wife & she asked me what I did today. I told her I did some diary entries about doing my patch amendments. Then she started asking questions about my diary. She never asks about my diary. The next thing I knew she was looking at my diary! I'm pretty sure someone tipped her off about my use of her kitchen utensils.   Wednesday, April 10 View Page The first cucumber beetle of the year!   Wednesday, April 10 View Page The “Putnam Patch” is ready to go! Amended, tilled, & hoop houses built!   Wednesday, April 10 View Page Last night I filed the edges of my seeds with my wife’s emery board. What would I do without her & all of her useful gadgets? These are the seeds I am starting!   Wednesday, April 10 View Page This morning I’m soaking my seeds in water with a little peroxide. I split them into 2 groups: thin/white seeds & thick/tan seeds. The white ones will soak for a couple hours & the tan ones will get another hour or two. I have them all marked for easy identification. I like to mark them mainly with letters rather than numbers (weights). After a few days of being moist 3’s, 6’s, & 8’s, and 1’s & 7’s can look a lot alike!   Thursday, April 11 View Page When I was marking my seeds before soaking them yesterday I put a big “X” on the two 1620 Pritchard seeds. 24 hours later they are the first & only seeds showing their root. “X” marks the spot! I rolled my seeds in moist paper towels & put them in zip lock baggies & then into a giant igloo cooler with a heat mat controlled by a thermostat set to 89 degrees.   Thursday, April 11 View Page To stay one step ahead of the sprouting seeds, I made these up this morning. Each one contains about 7 cups of Black Gold Seedling Mix, 1/4 teaspoon of Myco Seed Treat, 1/16th cup of Wow Mycorrhizae, & 1.5 cups of water. These pots are now in the igloo cooler warming up for what will happen next!   Thursday, April 11 View Page I mixed these two products together before putting them into the seed starting mix. Last year I tried mixing them to use as my seed burying mix…but as I recall the Myco Seed Treat somehow drew moisture out of the atmosphere & caused the mix to clump. Has anyone else experienced this?   Saturday, April 13 View Page Day 3: Here’s what wants to grow! 2-1620 Pritchard’s, 2560 Gienger, & 2501 Bernstrom. I put them in pots after they started showing a root. Of the twelve seeds I started the only one not showing any sign of life is the 1300 Gienger. I hope it starts. I have/had high hopes for it!   Saturday, April 13 View Page This is interesting! 73 degrees, 65% humidity, & 1173 ppm CO2 in my greenhouse this morning. This is without any CO2 supplementation! When the greenhouse is opened up it has been reading about 405-410 ppm. My soil is generating CO2 at nearly perfect levels! That is crazy!!! When my plants begin growing they will quickly use up the CO2 & it will fall. Then my Trolmaster will turn on my burner & keep it up around 1000ppm (or what ever level I set it to).   Saturday, April 13 View Page Over the winter I spent a lot of time thinking about basic science. I focused on how & why things grow. As pumpkin growers the science begins with photosynthesis. Three things are required for photosynthesis: light, water & CO2…actually four things if you count the plant.   Saturday, April 13 View Page Liebig’s Law of Limitation is the next basic concept of science we should focus on. We test pH, we test electrical conductivity, we have soil tests done, we add amendments, but most of us do not take the time to understand the science of what these things mean & how they impact the growth of our plants & the size of our fruit. Most of us just do these things because someone told us we should. I know I hadn’t really thought about basic science since I had been in college many years ago. Shame on us! And shame on me!!!   Saturday, April 13 View Page Organic Chemistry is another topic we should be thinking about. Organic Chemistry is the study of compounds which contain carbon in their structure & how they combine with other elements…such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium & the other trace elements which we test for. It is the “how they combine” part that we should really care about. Some elements are needed in larger quantities than others in order for a plant to grow & produce fruit at its ideal best. That’s why be care about pH & ratios. Yes, it is ALL about science! The better we understand it, the better job we can do of growing plants which will achieve our goals!   Saturday, April 13 View Page Liebig’s Law of Limitation tells us that it is the element (or elements) which becomes scarce during the growing process which will limit our plants’ growth & their ability to produce larger fruit. The scientific fact that our atmosphere contains about 400ppm of CO2, combined with the fact that the optimal CO2 levels for crops is between 700 & 1200ppm, tells me that we need to supplement our CO2 levels up to “ideal levels.” This chart illustrates how CO2 levels in greenhouses fluctuate over the course of the day when there are plants present with photosynthesis occurring.   Saturday, April 13 View Page By understanding this line of scientific logic we can see that our plants are being grown at CO2 levels which are less than ideal…and therefore we should be supplementing our CO2 levels. I can’t believe it took me 22 years of growing these things to grasp this reality & do something about it!   Saturday, April 13 View Page I think most of us consider using CO2 to be similar to athletes using performance enhancing drugs. I know I did, until I started to think about the fact that CO2 is one of the basic required elements for photosynthesis & that every plant already uses it…plants just need more CO2 to grow at “ideal” levels. There are rules which ban PED’s in sports; there are not rules in growing giant vegetables which ban CO2 supplementation. Our society has conditioned us to believe that using things which give its user a competitive edge is cheating. As pumpkin growers we use mycorrhizae, fertilizers, biostimulants, biologicals, & everything else that can help give us an advantage!   Tuesday, April 23 View Page Ah, the age-old question: “Is it better to plant a $50 tree in a $5 hole, or a $5 tree in a $50 hole?” No worries here because these are some of the finest holes time & money can create. If I was getting planted I’d take these holes any day!   Wednesday, April 24 View Page I think these are more like $75 trees (2501 Bernstroms). The holes are at least $500 holes. Between amendments, biologicals, heating cables, heaters, the little enclosure, the 30’x40’ co2 enclosure, co2 burner, propane, lights, greenhouse, and who knows what else, this is about as deluxe a place to be planted as you can find anywhere.   Wednesday, April 24 View Page Here’s a look at the whole set-up!   Wednesday, April 24 View Page After weeks of getting everything ready for planting, it is a great relief to get these plants in the ground!   Wednesday, April 24 View Page These are some serious lights. Thanks to my friend, Sam Felten for loaning them to me for the season! They are LEDs so they don’t require a lot of power to run & they don’t get too hot. They are fully programable. The color spectrum can be changed too. To suit my exacting needs, I have them set to turn on at 6:00am & off at 9:00pm. Just what the doctor ordered!   Wednesday, April 24 View Page To cover my warming boxes over night I am using 2” rigid insulation. I built the boxes so a half sheet of insulation fits perfectly on top. I will re-use the insulation as padding between my pumpkins & the pallets they will be put on to go to contests. I’m either very environmentally conscious or just plain old-fashioned cheap.   Friday, April 26 View Page What’s your VPD? Vapor Pressure Deficit: the difference between the amount of water vapor that is in the air and the maximum amount of vapor the air can hold before it is saturated. As the temperature rises the air can hold more vapor. As it falls it can hold less. Ideally when we are growing plants we want to provide them with a VPD between .8 & 1.1. I had never thought about this before I started learning about CO2. I did know that young plants like warm humid conditions. Now I have a target to shoot for!   Friday, April 26 View Page My wife sent me this today. And I thought she didn’t care!   Saturday, April 27 View Page My friend, Dave Chan, asked me to share a little more about the environmental controller that I am using for my greenhouse. It is a TrolMaster HCS-1. I bought mine used although it appears to be un-used (just pre-owned) on E-bay for $125. They retail new for $328. It comes with a temperature/humidity/light sensor. You can add sensors and switches(solenoids) for lights, fans, etc.   Saturday, April 27 View Page This is TrolMaster’s description of the unit. It does include use of the TrolMaster app, so it can be monitored & run remotely by a smartphone.