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Cooks Creek, Manitoba, Canada

I have a problem I have never run into in the past. All my plants are growing well and are a good size for this time of the year. I have set several pumpkins on all my plants but with 3-4 pumpkins now at, or reaching 10 day. Problem is all of them are well below my normal size, with the best being 17" circumference at day 9 (I just had to check it one day early). The two biggest differences this year are:

1. Very little rain - but I am watering a lot to make up for it.
2. The plants are producing a lot of females - upwards of 15-20 per plant (this is what I have never experienced before).

My thinking up to this point was the more females the better, but now I am starting to think differently. I went out tonight and picked off all but 3-5 key females in hopes that this will signal the plant to put its efforts into the pumpkins that are left instead of trying to produce new ones.

My question is whether anyone has run into this before and if this is the right thing to do and is there anything else I should do to try and stimulate growth. I think 3 years of dumping on the 10-52-17 fertilizer to try and overcome my lack of female problem is starting to catch up to me.

7/23/2003 10:29:37 PM

Nova Scotia

i wouldn't call it quits just yet. different plants have different stratagies for growing. good example is the famouse 845 bobier. thought to be the best ever seed it's grow for both plant and fruit is considered painfully slow. but once it start look out. my pumpkin this year started slow (cold first 3 days though) but it took off after that

7/24/2003 8:23:28 AM