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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Sunday, July 20, 2014
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ApertureScience
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Federal Way, WA
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Entry 1 of 45 |
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Welcome to Aperture Science's 2014 diary! I've been putting this off for a while now, primarily due to the fact that I'm too lazy to take pictures, but I finally decided it was time to share this year's progress, at least as a personal record. I began this year with a list of mistakes I made last year; the patch was far too small for two plants, I started several weeks too late, my homemade hoop house was a miserable failure, I didn't have enough drip tape to cover the entire plant's square footage, the simple process of the vine laying down turned into an epic multi-week battle, the moles wreaked havoc and there simply wasn't enough good soil. The first thing I did was dig a trench down to 'bed rock' all the way around the extended patch's perimeter, install 1/4" hardware fabric and bury it. I finished the trench, but only ended up bordering about 2/3 of the patch...thus far, nary a mole tunnel or hill has been seen! Secondly, I had 7 yards of Tagro delivered, which was then spread atop the extended patch, increasing its depth in areas and serving as a top dressing in others.
Anyway, I decided there was only room for one plant, and upon realizing I'll probably never grow a truly giant pumpkin in an area with ~4.5hrs of sunlight, I figured I'd better at least go orange, so I started four 827.5 Gerhardt seeds (811 x 1332 Wolf), planted the strongest two and culled it down to a single plant after a few weeks outdoors. I purchased a fantastic little portable greenhouse, kept the interior around 65F+ all night, every night, and picked up enough drip tape to cover the entire patch. Everything went pretty smoothly for a while. Here's the 827 currently...notice a spot without side vines; for whatever reason, those were stunted, so I'm slowly filling that area in with tertiary vines. The plant looks small, but the main vine is over 25ft now and is bigger than both my plants last year, combined, on this date!
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