Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 78 Entries. Tuesday, July 29 View Page This is first entry this year. I am new grower and mass amount of mistakes we have made is amazing hahhahaha. I am lucky to have two vines and pumpkins still hahaha. This was taken 7/23. It is on a vine from seeds from canada 1380 pound pumpkin. this pumpkin is about 8 feet out but is only choice i had and is pollinated to itself. It measures 32 in this photo and was 18 days old. Tuesday, July 29 View Page this photo taken on 7/27. pumpkin is now 50 inches around and growing fast - or fast to me hahaha. i had to raise the two vines on top of chicken wire as our gophers are so bad here. i also planted them in holes lined with chicken wire. the gophers destroy anything here but this is definitley working. vines are getting big too but it is hard to bury the vines hahaha. today pumpkin is sixty inches - two days after last photo. i am not sure if this is fast or not but it is growing about five inches a day right now. steve Wednesday, July 30 View Page This photo was taken this afternoon. This pumpkin is now measuring 63" around stem ends and 60" around middle. Yesterday it was 60" and 55". I am not sure if this is good or not but it is our first year and it seems fast to me hahaha. Our second plant has a 38" around pumpkin at 9' out that is perfectly round and looks beautiful. However it also has a pumpkin the size of a baseball that is also perfect looking and about four feet further out. I want to wait until it is for sure set before i cut the big one off but at same time it is so hard to cull such a pretty pumpkin. Any advice on this is most appreciate. steve Wednesday, July 30 View Page wrong photo in last entry hahaha. that was from months ago. steve Thursday, July 31 View Page here is our overall pumpkin garden. it is two vines. both are seeds from canadian club seed sale. one from 1378 pounder. the second from 980 pounder. note the chicken wire on ground. it is only way we have been able to keep gophers from destroying them hahaha. this is our first year with giant pumpkins but last year gophers wrecked havoc on our regular pumpkin vines and even burrowed into pumpkins themselves. Thursday, July 31 View Page here is pumpkin on 970 plant. it is crossed to 1378. it is only 9 feet out but so perfect looking i have not had heart to cull it. it is also growing very fast. i now have one at 13' out that is softball size and also perfect looking. any advice is appreciated. i know i need to cull the 9' out one but it is our first year and i just want to make sure we end up with something hahaha. Thursday, July 31 View Page here is photo of 13' out pumpkin on 970. it had perfect five lobe in flower as did 9' out. i wish someone else would cull the bigger one for us. i just do not have the heart to do it hahahhaa. steve Saturday, August 2 View Page vines are growing well and weather is really starting to warm up. however our hot weather does not start for another couple weeks or so but goes all the way into november. Saturday, August 2 View Page this is a better shot of our garden. it is two vines. both are growing fast but we got them in late this year - it is our first year. seeds went into ground first of may. vines are growing fast though and we should get two and half months more of hot dry weather with no rain hahaha. we are hoping to come up with two nice pumpkins this year and have two that appear set and are getting big fast. however i am not sure if it is fast to others - but it is fast to us hahaha. note the chicken wire. we have insane gopher problems here but growing them above the wire has kept the vines safe and healthy. main root area is in a big hole that is lined with chicken wire and then a mix of miracle grow, native soil, and coconut husk. Sunday, August 3 View Page This one is measuring in at approx. 74" in circumfrence. It is growing steadily but at same time we are just not getting any hot weather. Our hot weather should start coming on in about a couple weeks. steve Sunday, August 3 View Page Howdy. Here is pumpkin two. It is about 19 days old and measuring 54" in circumfrence. We got our vines in late as it was our first year and did not get seeds into ground until about the fourth of May. This one is growing fast too and looks like it will soon catch up with the one that is a week and a half older. Steve Tuesday, August 5 View Page This one is measuring in at 63" circum. today. It seems to be growing about 10 pounds a day. We put sand from local beach dunes under it last night. Thanks for all input and suggestions. Steve Tuesday, August 5 View Page This one is growing steadily and seems to be averaging about 12 pounds a day. It is measuring in at 82" in circum and will be one month old tomorrow. thanks again for all input and advice. it is really helping a lot. Steve Thursday, August 7 View Page this one is measuring in at 71 circum today and growing fast. all looks good and plants look healthy. Thursday, August 7 View Page wrong photo in last entry. that was taken two days ago and this pumpkin is not measuring 204 OTT. it is not easy to measure it well as tape wants to keep sliding off. steve Thursday, August 7 View Page this pumpkin is doing really well and looks great too. we have two plants this year and both seem to be very healthy and happy but we got them in about 1 1/2 months late this year. this measures 71" circum today. steve Sunday, August 10 View Page This one is now a 35 days old and growing about 14 pounds a day on average. It is getting so large it is hard to measure well. This is our first year and we have two plants and two pumpkins going. If you have any advice it is greatly appreciated. Thanks. Steve Sunday, August 10 View Page This one is about 24 days old. It is averaging about 14 pounds a day also and is growing fast. We are going to let the vines grow for another few weeks as we did not get the seeds into the ground until mid may this year and it is our first year. Our contest is not until October 25 and we have warm to hot weather all the way into november so I am hoping for good growth until contest - it is our first year though. Any advice on fertilizers etc is greatly appreciated. Right now we have bat guana around stump area and also are spraying with miracle grow about once a week. thanks. steve Wednesday, August 13 View Page This is our little pumpkin. It is 214 ott today and is will be one month old in three days. it appears to be averaging about 15 pounds a day. it is our first year of growing and out bigger pumpkin measured 234 ott today. these are the biggest pumpkins i have ever seen in real life so this is a lot of fun. thanks for all assistance and advice too. steve Friday, August 15 View Page This one is now about 38 days old and is about 300 pounds. it is growing a steady 13-16 pounds a day. our other one is right behind it but seems to be growing a little faster. it will be 30 days tomorrow and is almost 300 too. Friday, August 15 View Page same pumpkin different angle lol. thanks. steve Sunday, August 17 View Page this is our biggest. it is over 300 pounds now but hard to measure well lol. hard to photo too because of all the foliage. steve Sunday, August 17 View Page sorry. this is it. steve Sunday, August 17 View Page this is actually the big one. the first one is just under 300 and this one is about 50 pounds bigger. steve Sunday, August 17 View Page same pumpkin different angle lol. this one is about 40 days old. the round one is was 30 days old yesterday. steve Wednesday, August 20 View Page this one has grown at least sixty pounds in three days. it is looking great and plant and pumpkin look very healthy. i am worried about split in stem in next photo. it is our first year and this pumpkin has had splits in stem throughout its growth that keep healing. thanks Wednesday, August 20 View Page this crack in stem has me worried but this pumpkin has had splits in stems since it started that keep healing themselves. steve Thursday, August 21 View Page the other photo of this didn't seem to transfer properly. This pumpkin is over 350 pounds and is 35 days old. i am worried a bit about split in stem though. steve Saturday, August 23 View Page This one is still growing about 15 pounds a day. it is steady and has been growing about same rate a day for a few weeks. it is measuring at about 400 pounds. i am noticing a lot of aphids on its leaves suddenly. if anyone knows a good remedy for this it is most appreciated. thanks. steve Saturday, August 23 View Page Here is split in stem I noticed a few days ago on our faster growing pumpkin. The split has not grown in three days and two days ago I put a ton of anti fungal powder on it and in it. we are in a very dry climate too so i am leaving this area uncovered in daytime to get sun dried. The pumpkin is putting on 20-25 pounds a day still and appears to have put on 25 pounds yesterday. it should top 400 pounds tomorrow. this is our first year growing so these are by far the two biggest pumpkins we have seen in real life. this one is about 38 days old. thanks for all advice and input so far. it as enabled us to keep these to alive and growing. steve Saturday, August 23 View Page Here is a photo of our fastest growing pumpkin. it is averaging over 20 pounds a day now. our season goes far into october as we have hot weather into november and no frost so it is going to be interesting to see what happens. both of our pumpkins are at about 400 pounds. steve Sunday, August 24 View Page this one measured 420 pounds today. It grew 30-35 pounds in 24hours. it is hard to get exact measurement but this one is growing fast. i put some support under the vine too to help with crack in stem and dosed it with anti fungal powder. crack seems to be stabalizing. steve Wednesday, August 27 View Page Here is our number one pumpkin today. It is measuring almost 500 pounds and will be 45 days old in about three days. It is growing very fast and the split on stem seems to be holding fine for now. I put two slices above it on the stem and then dosed it all with anti fungal powder. Our other pumpkin seems to be holding at about 13 pounds per day and is about 430-440 pounds. it is our first years so both of these are by far the biggest pumpkins i have seen in real life and the big one is big enough to have one last years weigh off in our area now. we have warm dry weather until weigh so i am not sure what to expect. thanks again for all advice and help. steve Sunday, August 31 View Page This is our largest pumpkin and it is 45 days old today. It is weighing in at about 530 pounds or so. The split in stem seems to have stabilized and has not grown in over a week. we have had hot dry weather and we put tons of antifungal foot powder on and in split. Thank you for advice. We are also starting to really pump on the seaweed extract. this one is averaging over 20 pounds a day. thanks. steve Sunday, August 31 View Page Same pumpkin different photo lol. It is amazing how fast this thing is growing . It is already bigger than our county's last year big pumpkin at 45 days old. our county's competition has been weak so we are hoping to beat county record this year. It is our first year so if we hit over 500 pounds we were happy. Now we are shooting for 1000. almost two months to go and warm sunny weather the whole way we may make it. our other pumpkin is right behind this one in size. Wednesday, September 3 View Page Here is our number one pumpkin again. it seems to be slowing down in growth this week but to be honest it is getting very hard to measure accurately as tape keeps sliding off etc hahahhaa. it is still going well though and seems to be close to 600 pounds. I am going to ask if anyone knows what to do to jump start it again. it is very very hot though here in daytime right now and possibly this is slowing it down a bit. but it is certainly not bad for our first year pumpkin on a late in soil plant hahaha. and it is has at least 1 1/2 months to go. thanks. steve Sunday, September 7 View Page Here is our biggest one. it is now at 600 pound range but really getting hard to measure accurately. it slowed down to about 100 pounds last week though. our weather is so hot right now i think this may be part of it as vines look great. Steve Sunday, September 7 View Page i think last photo was wrong photo - four days ago. tomorrow i am going to photo from new angle as this pumpkin is really pushing out at blossom area. our other pumpkin is right at a little over 500. thanks again for all advice and help. it is our first year and we would have had a mess at best without your help. steve Monday, September 8 View Page here is a side angle of our big one. it used to be such a good looking pumpkin and now it is sort of an ugly looking mutant. still this photo gives good idea of depth of it. steve Monday, September 8 View Page another angle of same pumpkin. its blossom end is really pushing out now. it is getting very hard to measure because of size so i am dropping down to one or two measurements per week. Sunday, September 14 View Page Here is latest photos. took them today. We have had unusually cold weather this week - about 70 in day and 50 at night. only grew about 55 pounds last week. we are pumping on seaweed extract and fish emulsion to turn this around. it should be 90 plus in day time and 65 plus at night here now. i am hoping for end of cold snap soon and today was warmer. we're about 650 or so on this one now and hoping to hit 750 to 800 by contest. it is our first year though so this is honestly by far the biggest pumpkin i have ever seen. steve Sunday, September 14 View Page same pumpkin same angle but i loved this photo too. thanks. steve Sunday, September 14 View Page i took this photo to give an idea of depth and shape of this pumpkin. our other one is about 100 pounds behind it. it was our first year and we got a really late start getting the seeds into the ground so we are happy with results for far. the smaller one grew about 50 this week too. thanks. steve Tuesday, September 16 View Page here is photo of our patch taken this morning at around sunrise. our weather is heating up again and is almost back to normal - still about ten degrees cool but a lot better than 20-30 degrees too cool we had last week. the vines still look really healthy so i am hoping for some steady last month gains but it is our first year so we are not sure exactly what to expect. our bigger one seemed to put on about 10 pounds or so yesterday. we are fertilizing every day at root area with seaweed extract on day then fish emulsion the next. four ounces per plant per day. as long as no adverse affects show up on vines we will keep this up. we are hoping to break 700 pounds this week. thanks. steve Thursday, September 18 View Page Howdy. here are a few new pictures. our big pumpkin is still growing at least ten pounds a day and should soon break 700 - if it has not done so yet. it is not easy to measure this thing. thanks. STEVE Thursday, September 18 View Page another photo of same pumpkin. i liked them both so much i put both photos on today. thanks. steve Thursday, September 18 View Page here is side angle of this pumpkin. it is starting to grow out from the blossom end a lot now. however it is mostly growing round and wide. Thursday, September 18 View Page here is our other pumpkin. it is hard to photo this one well as leaves are very thick around it. it measures about 550 or so. thanks. steve Thursday, September 18 View Page A local preditor. It was such a cool photo I had to add it. Thanks. Steve Sunday, September 21 View Page Hi. This is our big one again. It is measuring 143 circum. x 93" x 91" so it appears to have just broken 700 pounds. Does anyone know if these round ones measure heavy or light hahahaha. I have heard that mayny weigh heavy and am hoping ours does lol. We are fertilizing with liquid potasium fertilizer i ordered from a hydroponics store then next day seaweed extract then next day fish emulsion. four ounces of each at root area mixed with about 5 gallons of water and we are drip irrigating about four hours a day throughout vine areas. vines look amazingly healthy and as long as vines show no distress i will keep up this regime. unless someone has a better idea of course. also the bigger pumpkin is still growing about 10 or so pounds a day. thanks again. steve. Tuesday, September 23 View Page Here is split in stem. I have been dousing it with antibiotic foot powder. And covering it at night then uncovering it in day as weather has been warm and dry since split started. It as grown in stem but not in pumpkin itself. I also made a few slices in stem above it to relieve stress. it has put on a few hundred pounds since split start and is still putting on over ten pounds a day. Thank you for all advice on this. Steve Tuesday, September 23 View Page Here is some of our indian corn. We use a lot of it for ceremonies and I had one very small ear of this color of red last year. i planted a section of just these seeds and ended up with about 25 ears this year of this color. I am trying to develope this as the only color i get so I will only plant this color next year. thanks. Steve Thursday, September 25 View Page Here is our big one again today. it is over 700 and weather is now VERY warm every day = today was over ninty. nights are dropping to about 47. vines look great too and very healthy. i am hoping for some good growth. we have 3 weeks today until contest and big one should sitting around 725-730. it appears to be growing about 10 pounds a day. i am not sure what to expect but am hoping to hit 800 for contest. thanks. steve Thursday, September 25 View Page i like this photo better but they are both fun photos. i am putting on four ounces a day of seaweed extract at stump area each evening and both vines are looking great. i will keep this up until i see a problem. i am trying not to push them too hard as now the big one is a shoe-in for champkion at local contest so i don't want to blow it by splitting the pumpkin hahaha. thanks. steve Sunday, September 28 View Page Here is our big pumpkin four days later. We are taking bi-weekly photos to keep track of growth. Sunday, September 28 View Page Here is a side view. This one is measuring 334 ott today. it appears to be approx 750 and put on about 50 or so pounds last week. We have 2 1/2 more weeks to contest and are now shooting for 800 by contest. This one is starting to get a strange snout type growth area around blossom area. It looks like it has elephantaisis at this area hahaha. thanks. Steve Sunday, September 28 View Page Here is a blossom end shot. It is hard to get a good photo of this area because of leaves etc.. Thursday, October 2 View Page Biweekly photos of pummpkins. Both of our pumpkins still look healthy and vines pretty good still. this one is getting close to 800 pounds and appears to be growing at least seven pounds a day still. our weather is still in the 50s at night and low nineties in the day time. We have two weeks and one day until our contest. thanks. steve Thursday, October 2 View Page here is another fun photo. same pumpkin but a fun photo too. thanks. steve Sunday, October 5 View Page Here is pumpkin number one. it is at 800 pounds by ott and we have 10 more days until contest. it is still making about an inch a day or so ott and we have mid 80s weather until contest. not sure what to expect but so far this pumpkin is biggest pumpkin i have ever seen and is biggest pumpkin raised in our tri-county area ever. it has been a very lucky first year considering we got this vine in 2 months late. i look forward to next year and getting its seeds in on time next year lol. thank you so much for all assistance and help. steve Sunday, October 5 View Page here is side view of big one. it is really pushing out at blossom end. Sunday, October 5 View Page sorry. here is side view Sunday, October 5 View Page here is or other pumpkin. it is about 625 pounds and still growing a few pounds a day. this poor vine has had a lot of bad luck. it came from seed from 1300 pound pumpkin but it is our first year and it had something get its main vine - gopher probably. this caused us to put chicken wire down completely on growing area - we did put them in gopher box areas for their roots ahead of time but it caused us to grow pumpkin off a secondary vine. add it that we got seeds in almost two months late and we had to grow it only 7 feet from stump - we were running out of time hahaha. it has had a lot of bad luck hahaha. we will use some seed from it next year as it has great genetics but had a hard hard life hahaha. it bore the brunt of all of our mistakes this year. thanks. Steve Monday, October 6 View Page Here is my favorite photo that has been taken recently. It is probably one of my two or three all time favorites of this year with pumpkins. We have ten days until contest so I am trying to keep adding a bit of weight without blowing it with a big split or something like this with our pumpkins at same time hahaha. Last years champion was 626 and all time biggest was 725 pounds so our chances are looking really good. I have also been told it was a bad year for pumpkins in our area so contest is saying ours are biggest so far entered. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Unfortunately California is a pretty strong state for growing so although local contest is not that strong state championship is much tougher for next year hahaha. Thank you again. Steve Thursday, October 9 View Page Here is latest photo of big pumpkin. it is over 800 pounds - about 825 and still growing - but not fast hahaha. we had 100 degrees yesterday and mid ninties last few days. nights about 50. our other pumpkin has started to grow faster now. it is at 625. we are hoping for 850 by contest on big one - contest is in one week hahaha. thanks again for all help and assistance. Steve Thursday, October 9 View Page here is another photo of same pumpkin. split has held in stem though it is big we have put on over 400 pounds since we got split. where stem meets pumpkin is insanely wide. ott is about 340. thanks. steve Sunday, October 12 View Page Here are last photos of pumpkins in the field. On Wednesday we cut them off and load them for weigh off/contest. We got a freak frost last night that was over a month early. It fried most of the leaves but some that were hidden are still alive and the vines look healthy so we are going to leave pumpkins on the vines until Wednesday to keep them from losing weight. Weather gets back to normal as of tonight hahaha. days in 80s and nights in high forties to fifties. Thanks again. Steve Sunday, October 12 View Page Another photo - same pumpkin. Boy the patch looks sad with no leaves hahaha. Steve Sunday, October 12 View Page here is our other pumpkin. I have never been able to get this angle of this one because vine had leaves before hahaha. Steve Sunday, October 12 View Page Leaves always got in the way of the of this angle on our big pumpkin hahaha. Well now we have a photo. Steve Sunday, October 12 View Page Here is photo of patch. Not looking very good today hahaha. Sweatlodge is in background. Thanks. Steve Sunday, October 19 View Page Here is a photo of our big pumpkin at contest. We won first place and broke previous record by 75 pounds. pumpkin weight 790 but a freak early frost killed our vines a week earlier and weather was ninty so it seems to have lost about 35 pounds before contest. Still it was a very cool first year and my son really loved the whole experience. He also got third place in contest with our other pumpkin - 590 pounds. it lost 35 pounds too or there abouts. Thank you again for all advice. without it it would have not been this experience at all hahaha. Steve Sunday, October 19 View Page here is another photo of our big one. it now holds tricounty record hahaha. it was a lot of fun to watch it grow. Thank you again. Steve Sunday, October 19 View Page Here is one last photo. Steve Sunday, October 19 View Page here is our other pumpkin. it came in third place at 590 pounds. this poor pumpkin was the brunt of every rookie mistake we made this year. we are so excited to plant again next year. we will have get our seeds in on time next year and hopefully have a lot less rookie mistakes. it was a fun and great year. thank you. steve Sunday, October 19 View Page here's our babies in their final resting place - until we get the seeds out hahaha. steve Friday, October 31 View Page here is front page of local paper. my son had a ball. he was in three or four papers here and also a few tv stations too hahaha. he can't wait for next year. Thank you again for all help and advice. it made it possible to get a big pumpkin our first year. we set local record and broke old one by 75 pounds hahaha. steve Friday, October 31 View Page here's another photo. he loved getting the prize money too - won first and third place lol. thank you again. you made our summer. steve