Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 13 Entries. Tuesday, May 30 View Page Here is our Socal gang at our San Diego growers seminar. You can see how serious Chris takes these events by how his serious his face is!!! Pictured is Chris Dunn, Kevin Donahu (front and center) and Vince George on the right. I am out of the picture! :) On a serious note, what a blessing to have such talent all in one place to help out.   Tuesday, May 30 View Page I started a few different seeds, thank you to everyone who gave me seeds. The 2424 Caspers was deformed and the 2365 wolf failed to germinate, so it came down to the 2168 Werner and 1953 Daletas. The Daletas was chosen by my Father, so we are not looking back! Cold, cold abnormal year for my hot area, 65 and cloudy is the norm so far, 15 to 20 degrees below normal.   Tuesday, August 1 View Page 1953 Daletas day 52, 1035 lbs. Growth is on the wind down at 27 lbs a day. 52 days until our weigh off. See how many lbs we can get out of her on the back end. She feels solid. Cross, 1953 Daletas by 2168 Werner   Monday, August 14 View Page Day 64 for the 1953 Daletas   Thursday, August 24 View Page Day 75 of the 1953 Werner, 1420 lbs estimated. Weigh off in 29 days.   Thursday, August 24 View Page I love her shape, not the biggest fruit we have grown, but very respectable and pretty for a 1953! Think Heavy. Think heavy. Well, I can hope!   Thursday, August 24 View Page Hillary came right through our area, what a surprise in San Diego. We got just under 3 inches of downpour and bent and broke up quite a few leaves, but we are still in one piece thankfully!   Monday, September 18 View Page Day 100 on the 1953 Daletas. We harvest in a few days for our weigh off this Saturday. She eaked out more lbs than I thought she would over the last month. She will still be growing when harvest at 104 days. I think the cross will be golden :)   Monday, September 18 View Page Backside of the 1953. She is one pumpkin I was not afraid to push hard the last 30 days, she seems very solid. Our southern california weigh off should be amazing this year with a lot of my friends growing monsters that are bigger than ours. So we are thinking we need to go pretty heavy to win. But hey, she is a 1953, so we have a chance!   Sunday, September 24 View Page weigh off day in Socal! Lots of HUGE fruit this year!   Sunday, September 24 View Page Our 1953 Daletas, we were weighed third to last, final estimation was 1573 lbs before weighing...   Sunday, September 24 View Page hitting the scale!   Sunday, September 24 View Page We weighed 1695 lbs! only 10 lbs off my best weight and 122 lbs over chart. What a blessing. I think the seeds will be great, 1953 by 2168 Werner. The real two winners for the day were Vince George, who took 3rd with a 1601 lb fruit and Kevin Donahue with his 1708 lb fruit. Both these guys set new personal bests by hundreds of lbs, 300 lbs for Vince and 500 lbs for Kevin. Kevin also set the new all time socal record, eclipsing the old record by 3 lbs. I am proud of both of them as friends and Christian brothers!