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Pulaski Tn [email protected]

call it what you like...maybe i'm just going through a burnout spell of too much time in the patch but after reading this post it has just kinda took the wind out of my sails...to think of "ALL" the damn work and worry i have put into my plants and then read this i just cant really get over it..funny how somethings effect different people differently..
Blackcloud. We grew 100 AG plants in a field last year, with no fertilizer srayed for bugs twice, hand pollinated, no weeding, no vine burying no pruning, no culling and had 40 pumpkins over 500 with 4 over 700 pounds. Alls it takes is decent soil

drew
7/21/2003 1:05:18 AM

7/25/2003 11:42:46 AM

Garden State Pumpkins

Theres plenty of that feeling going around Cloud!..what about the guy who is a first timer plants a seed and pops a 900 lb pumpkin? Luck? good soil?perfect weather? who knows..but ya gotta keep trying to get the soil right...the ferts right...the weeds low..pray that god gives ya the weather ...and your PB's keep going up...all ya can do! Hang in there!!and se if you can get Drew to send ya down 2000 cubic feet of that soil!! I try and watch the guys who start with nothing and keep building their soil and consistently get larger pumpkins...never thought anyone should feel they started at the top and worked their way down!! LOL

7/25/2003 12:03:52 PM

Brillion Wisconsin

If I had that good of luck, I would have won the lottery twice. Dean o

7/25/2003 1:11:02 PM

Utah

living in a good region for growing helps also...

7/25/2003 2:49:39 PM

Nova Scotia

i think alexsdad was reffering to me and i strongly beleive it was luck for me about 50% other 50% was dedicated work.

7/25/2003 3:55:29 PM

Utah

I think there is always some luck involed... but i heard Brett Hester once say... harder I work the better luck I have. :)

7/25/2003 4:13:11 PM

Whidbey Island

It's nice to have a big field and rely on luck, but we less well landed gentry who have miniscule gardens need all the work and tricks to squeeze out that extra 50 pounds out of our one or two plants. Sure it is hard work, but like I tell my wife.....She always knows where I am and I'm not drinking, smoking, chasing skirts or gambling (well, giant pumpkin growing is always a gamble) so she lets me continue with no questions asked.

7/25/2003 8:58:16 PM

North Ga

Where on the earth is Whidbey Island?

7/25/2003 9:30:02 PM

Chico, Ca

900 lb the first year would be nice... Our first year We only could manage 758.5 lb...and we worked our butt off to get it.

Robert

7/26/2003 12:41:27 AM

Sequim, WA

Pappy Whidbey is in northern Puget Sound in Washington state. Naval air station out there, lots of farms, doesn't get too hot or too cold. Drive out there over the bridge at Deception Pass is some of the most spectacular scenery you'd want to lay eyes on in the state. Amazing the way the water rushes through there as the tides move in and out.

7/26/2003 2:37:36 AM

porterville,california usa

what?!! no drinkin`, no smokin`, no chasin`, no gamblin`?!!? Just what kind of respectable patch keeper doesn`t have a poker/blackjack table set up under the shade tree in the middle of the patch with the ice chest full of bud lite close at hand? that`s the only reason i made my patch so big. to have a place to go and hide and do all those things! but i guess if i`m still a chasin` i must have made it TOO big!

7/26/2003 2:56:40 AM

Montoursville, PA

My gaming table is a big one some twenty five by fifty feet.
I uncork a lot of Agro-K bottles in an attempt to addict something called a pumpkin plant. One bad move can indeed get most costly. I sometimes slip and smoke in desperation knocking it off a day later with much effort and sometimes agony and baited shortness of breath. I like all that juicy good crap too but choose to try and do better in the big gaming table instead. My life is a bore. So quite it scares me sometimes. My diary today shows I did get wild for a moment and KO'ed a hog. ]:o)

7/26/2003 8:08:52 AM

Whidbey Island

Tiller is mostly right about Whidbey Island, but for growing pumpkins it really does get too cold. Too much marine air and it is ten or more degrees cooler than the folks over by Seattle who have grown the really big ones. Evey fall we have our own little local AG contest because we all know that we can't compete with the rest of you. Strickly small town stuff, with a pumpkin pie baking contest, ugliest and prettiest AG contest and of course, the biggest of the Island. We even have a kids division.

7/26/2003 9:49:07 AM

North Ga

Any land for sale out there? Sounds like a good retirement environment!!!

7/26/2003 12:45:11 PM

Garden State Pumpkins

Sean Robert, I think ya took my post wrong...I Knew alot of 1st year guys who have popped a big one...I rooted for em everyday! I love seeing that! I just wish everyone here could do it once! Plenty of guys got 15 years under their belt and work just as hard every year and haven't seen one yet..and it does get frustrating...The post was to keep their heads up...Plenty of great growers without 900 lbs...Yah just keep trying and someday the magic will be with ya!! That's all...Grow em Big! Chuck

7/26/2003 1:49:17 PM

Deer Park WA

Talk about a loss of interest, my 14 year old daughter goes out to the patch about once a week and waters, burys a few weeds along with thw vines and has the largest fruit in the patch! Last season it was the same thing for her and she grows a 596# pumpkin at the Spokane interstate fair on Sept 7th!!! I worked on my plant every extra minute and only beat her by 57#.... Hang in there it's been 90 plus degrees here for 3 weeks straight with no rain for 10 weeks now. (my daughters plant is still ahead of mine)!

7/27/2003 4:54:32 PM

Caceres, mid west of Spain

As old fellows say here, when God cracked the egg, some places got the yellow.
All my young and adult life I travelled seeking, looking for a "Shire", which could match in Tolkien's idea. Don't know really why, not to live in, but to know it could really exist, and it could really be made or travel to. I've seen many places, great sceneries, beautiful soft landscape, great farming soils, pretty cottage land. In many countries, Amish region in Pennsylvania, a river valley lost in Connecticut, Lautrec in the South of France, Kent old villages in South England, all the country road between Schrewsbury and Leonminster, near Wells, Siena Hills in Italian Toscana, the southeast corner of Vancouver Island, San Miguel of Azores Islands of Portugal... But none was perfect, all of them had some trouble. Once in a while, don't know when, I realized that the one Shire that could match with my particular idea has to be build by myself, and my place could be as fine as each other, because it has to be made in the ground and in your mind as well.
So... let me compost more manure!

7/28/2003 1:32:02 AM