The girls help me get the soil ready

"The worms! They're everywhere!"

"Quick! Let's pick them up!"

It turns out Erin makes a pretty good shoveler.

Leah, she just loves to dance.

Lots of worms mean healthy soil...


But maybe this is over doing it a little bit???

That's a shovel full of worms and dirt from the compost pit. The girls and I worked on the garden today. I'm going to move the planting date up some, I just haven't decided when the new date is. Maybe about May 5th.

This is what makes America Great!

Ah, the great white north, where pumpkins growth with reckless abandon...

Wouldn't it be great if there was a cable TV channel dedicated to our favorite sport?

I hope the apple won't fall far from the tree!

This is the pumpkin my new seed came out of - the 974.5 Bhaskaran 2005. (The picture is shamelessly stolen and used without permission from the grower, David Bhaskaran. Dave is a grower in Minnesota who generously gives his seeds to wannabees like me.)

I'm really excited about this year's seed. The father of David's pumpkin is a seed I've seen offered in seed autions before, and the pollinator came from a 1420 pound pumpkin. That seed has been named one of the "Twelve Seeds to watch for 2007"! It makes my hands shake just typing those words... this year's gonna be sweet!

By the way, if you're a fan of grotesquely huge pumpkins, you ought to check out the pictures of David's pumpkins:

http://members.aol.com/dbhaskaran/pumpkin06/

"If you aren't blowing 'em, you aren't growing 'em!"

Maybe I was luckier to harvest a pumpkin last year than I realized. Growers pour on the fertilizer and do all sort s of tricks to make these beasts huge, but sometimes the pumpkin just grows *too* fast and splits open.

I've seen a grower in South Dakota who had 9 plants last year and 3 pumpkins that made it. Another in Rochester had 7 plants and only 2 pumpkins made it..

I'm still only planing one plant, but I'm hoping to set 2 or even 3 pumpkins on it this year, if I can.

Of Course, Fertilizer is Important Too.

I've got a blend of liquid fertilizer to spray on the leaves, and some organic stuff for good measure. The 'secret sauce' is the 0-0-60 on the right. That will be dumped on late in the season. The last number is potash, which the plant used for fruit growth, and 60% potash ought to deliver quite a boost at the end.

It All Begins with the Seed

My seeds have arrived from my friend Dave in Minnesota. I am super excited about this year's pick. The mother pumpkin my seed came out of wieghed 974 pounds (pumpkins always grow bigger up north than here).

I've seen one of the parent seeds of that pumpkin included in seed auctions, and the other has been named one of the "Twelve Seeds to Watch" for 2007!

Serious growers treat pumpkin genetics as serious business. A top quality, proven seed can cost the grower more than the old pickup truck they haul the pumpkin to competition in!

And it was a fine Halloween!

I washed her out with the hose (the pumpkin I mean) before the party. She's turning to jelly, but still doesn't smell too much...

... which is a good thing considering how popular she was!

Happy Carver Beth (I mean, really, really Happy Carver Beth) poses with her work. (What exactly was in those Vampire's Blood shots anyway???)

Carving Pictures

Beth sketches the design...










... and we tape it to the pumpkin.










Notice how she's not "Bessie" any longer? It's just "the pumpkin".










Carving continues through the early afternoon.

Despite the smell.