Day 3 and All is Well

Magnolia has a baby sister now. I'm not going to name it, because one or the other will be removed next Saturday. May the best pumpkin win!

Baseball sized 48 hours after pollinating. Magnolia sure isn't wasting any time. I think she's burst out of the gate much faster than Bessie, but it's a long season.





Hillary the Deer is back. Here's her diet: leaves off the cherry tree, leaves off the rose, leaves off the huckleberry. Hillary seems to prefer leaves. But so far, she's not interested in pumpkin leaves. I'm still looking for a manual on how to gut and clean a deer.

Welcome Magnolia!

For unto us a daughter is born,
Unto us a daughter is given.
And suddenly there was a great multitude rejoicing!
And her name shall be called:
Magnolia!

National Pollination Day!

Ahh, the grandest holiday of them all! Especially after the uncertainty, the fear the entire event might be canceled this year.

This is the bloom in the pre-dawn hours, waiting to open. (Pollinators set their alarm clocks early on National Pollination Day.)









Now she's open! That white thing is a thermometer - it's gonna be a scorcher.












Lilly admires the male blossoms before we gather the pollen.












Can you see the pollen (it looks like yellow dust) after the petals have been removed?












What a fine-looking 5 lobed flower. 5 lobes, which means there are 10 stalks in there which will make seeds, are slightly preferred over 4 lobed flowers. 5 lobes occur about 50% of the time, maybe a little less.

Get out you stupid bees - that's my job today!







I just use the male flower like a paintbrush to distribute pollen.











Now we'll just hope for the best, it might take 48 hours to know for sure it worked. I'm feeling pretty good about this one though. The milk jugs are full of ice to try to keep things cool.

I'm Going To Be a Father

Thursday morning looks to be the day. Like all expectant parents, I better make a list or I'll forget something important!

- build a crib
- freeze up some blocks of ice
- set up the tarp
- prepare some baby food (this baby should love pureed Alaskan anchovies)
- call in sick for work
- write a birth announcement

So much to do in the next 2 days!!!

Too Much Fertilizer

Preemie 3 gave it up today and turned yellow. The folks at bigpumpkins.com think I may have fertilized too much, or maybe the heat is doing the damage.

I started a backup seed yesterday. I think it might be too late for that. Then again, if I remember correctly, Doug Adam's Georgia record pumpkin was started on June 23rd. That could be a good sign!








So I've shaded Preemie 4 with a tarp and quit fertilizing. Notice the green stripes and spots on her? I have no idea what that means. Probably too much fertilizer. Darn it.

I will say that each Preemie makes it further than the one before. Preemie 4's flower is already bigger than the fruit, which I think is a good sign.

Preemie 3

You hold my summer in your hands.

Wait a minute... do pumpkins have hands? Anyway, yesterday morning I thought she was fading like the others. Then last night I thought she looked better. I'm going to run out of chances before too long.

There is a Premie 4 on a side vine, and Premie 5 even further out than Premie 3. But if Preemie 3 can't make it, I guess something is wrong that isn't going to get better.

I wonder if there's time to start over? I'll wait a week on Premie 5 before I do that. And the kid in this picture looks pretty healthy. I'll know her fate for sure tomorrow or Sunday.

The Joys of Fish Fertilizer

Wow, it's come all the way from Alaska! But how can it be "deodorized fish emulsion"? The stuff smells like every anchovy in the ocean gathered up in Alaska for the international anchovy convention.













The flies and wasps get excited when I spray it on the plant. I will point out it looks better than it smells.

But if it grows bigger pumpkins - and it is supposed to do that - it's a small price to pay!

Random Thoughts

I'm nervous. Preemie 2 has given up now. The third baby pumpkin looks good, and should bloom in about 5 days if all goes well.

But what if Preemie 3 fails too? It's within a couple of feet of being as far out the vine as Bessie was - about 20 feet. I'm running out of real estate!

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The cats have started spending a lot of time outdoors. I think their driven by the Hunter's Instinct to bag a few of those elusive Alaskan anchovies.

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Hey wait! Where's my blog about the Anchovies? Gone? I'll get that up on the blog tomorrow.

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Baylor's Tree and Shrub systemic insecticide has changed my life. I CANNOT BELIEVE that stuff isn't labeled for vine borer treatment.

I'm Getting Impatient for the Main Show to Start!

The vine is looking pretty good. I guess that's about on par with where we were last year. There has been no sign of a vine borer since I treated the other mini-pumpkin plants. The borers can't give up this easily, can they?










Preemie 2 is looking pretty good. Preemie 1 did not survive. Preemie 3 will be about as far out the vine as Bessie was. I'd still like to grow 2 pumpkins off this plant if the plant is strong enough.

Tonight, a Shout-Out!

To my pumpkin-growing-buddy Lee, an excellent grower from South Georgia. Lee offered me a pair of prime seeds and I'm really pleased to have them!








It turns out I won't need them until next season (I hope I hope I hope). But no question, here's the seed for 2008. It's from a 1,112 pound pumpkin from Jeff Holland, a well-known grower, and both parents were way over 1,000 pounds too! Oh man that's gonna be sweet!

Thanks again Lee- grow 'em big!!!

It's not quite Kudzu...

But that's a solid foot of growth today. It's sort of hard to tell from the picture, but I turned the tape measure upright and pulled the tape out a foot.

Today was cloudy all day, maybe I'll try it again to compare on a pright sunny day. Then again, my uncle Roy says plants grow their best on cloudy days, and he should know.

Time for an Experiment

The plant is growing well. The misting and watering system fires for a few minutes every hour during the afternoon. And amazingly, that's legal - there are no watering restrictions on a vegetable garden.

So I've laid down the tape measure and we'll record how much the vine grows in 24 hours.

Premie II has shown up now. If I can' I will probably pollinate at least two pumpkins, and try to hedge my bets against a season-ending disaster. But I've never successfully pollinated more than one fruit on a vine before - it takes a really healthy vine to do that I think.

For Unto Us a Child Is Given!


Ok, that might be a bit premature.

This first fruit probably won't be strong enough to survive to blooming, and if it does I might cull it anyway.

So I'll name her Preemie 1 for now.

Preemie 1 is squat and round, as opposed to the long and lean Bessie. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But her short little stem... that thing better start growing longer, or this is going to be another issue before long.

Either They Go, or I Go!

I had a minature pumpkin vine doing great, it already had five baby pumpkins on it. But it was sitting exactly where the big plant wanted to put down some roots. So with a sigh, out came the minature plant.


Huh? What's this?!

Can there already be squash vine borers ripping up my vines???








The minature plants didn't get treated with insecticide in the pre-season like the main plant did. I doused all the plants this evening. Looks like the war has begun!

She's got some pretty nice leaves on her! It's time to get some fish fertilizer sprayed on them. The plant will absorb the fertilizer directly though the leaves, very efficient. Very smelly too. But that's a blog for another day...

The vine has been moved

Amd it's dead-center now.

But man, it doesn't look good does it? The posts you see are trying to hold up the leaves. The plant isn't wilting, it's just fussy after the big rearranging. It's interesting that the vine never even thought about cracking during all that.







Wow, what a difference a day makes! The leaves all perked back up, and we're ready for some serioous growing!

Well, the vine missed the path by a bit. I'll start moving it bit by bit and see if it can be done without snapping it. Next year I might start the seed in a pot and avoid this altogether.