Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 20 Entries. Saturday, January 19 View Page Well, I'm a newbie. Last year picked up a pack of Dill's Atlantic and split it with my brother, thinking we'd have a contest on who could grow the largest pumpkin. Realize now, that neither of us have ever grown any prize winner anything (garden state my butt!). We both have backyard gardens and I had a rather large plot and my brother ,though he has more room, likes to keep things small. We basically ammended our soil without a test, put a few seeds in a hill and watered it. I put a drip irrigation hose by it to go off for a 1/2 hour every other day. The seeds sprouted and got quite unruly in a very short time. I didn't know better and pruned any unruly vine that got too long. The flowers set and fertilized and I had 2 pumpkins growing. They grew pretty fast at first. I went away on vacation, came back and they were still doing pretty well. Then in the middle of July we had a couple of days over 100 and that sealed the deal on the pumpkins. One pumpkin rotted on the vine and the other one hung on but the vine rotted. I weighed in at a whopping 36 lbs. But I did beat my brother. It shouldn't be too hard to beat my record this year. This year I will try starting some seeds inside. I shall test my soil as soon as my master gardener neighbor drops of a test kit for me...I know I'm already late. Once I get them outside I'll actually try fertilizing them this year, and use fungicide. Then I resolve to not trim the vines short. I swear, pumpkins grew better out of my compost heap last year than in the patch; though they were smaller, they lasted til October. Trial and error...first step heat mat? Tuesday, January 22 View Page just purchased my seedling heat mat. my house is pretty cold, so I could use a little extra help keeping things going. good for forcing bulbs but not much else. finished reading "backyard giants". great book, the ending was joyful and triumphant! Friday, January 25 View Page been reading "how to grow world class pumpkins III". i'm hooked. now have big plans to use the largest bed in the backyard...a little odd shaped, but i'll make it work. it's a 400 sq. ft. amoeba shaped thing with one small ornamental plum tree growing from the center but nothing else. if i can start the vine on one side and grow it so the leaves stay in the sun but try to get a pumpkin in the shade that would be ideal (maybe crazy too). this totally avoids the area where i tried to grow last years pumpkin...just in case. Sunday, February 10 View Page well, the pic is stinkersmellcat...my little pumpkin cat stinkerbell. anyway, i got my soil test results back. i need to boost up my ph...i'm 5.5 shheees! everything else looks good...too much iron could be bad if i don't boost the ph, but i don't see that being a problem afterwards. a couple of weeks ago the ground thawed enough so i removed the slate in the patch that i was using as a walkway last year. what a muddy mess. i decided to plant 2 plants and do a wishbone pattern. i got my heat pad, peat pots, new seeds, grow lamp, microwhateverenzymes, and my brother said he was back in the race again this year! yay! just this year my hubby bought a new pickup (2007 chevy avalanche)...and guess what, it's orange! won't that look cool pulling up to a fair with a pumpkin in the back of that thing! if he'll let me put a giant pumpkin in it. ah dreams. Friday, March 28 View Page well, i got my soil test results back and i needed some major work on my pH...5.5. So i spread some granulated limestone. I also sprinkled some pre-emergent weed preventer this week since the forsythia is blooming now. My seeds are organized, and I moved most of the bulbs that were growing in the patch. the only ones left are some daffodils but they'll be done by the time i'm ready to plant. we're going to pick up bags of cow manure and compost today. i'm still going to do 2 plants, but i keep going back and forth whether i'm going to do one main vine or a wishbone pattern. hmmm... Saturday, April 19 View Page well, here goes. planting day. i got 25 bags humus/manure and spread them around my planting area. let the sun warm things up now. yesterday and today highs were 82. i got my pete pots filled and just realized i forgot my microrhyzea...stuff. so i'll dump the mix in a bucket and start overe. 8 pots. i've got 4 test seeds and 4 "good" seeds. i'll file and soak tonight. i use a solution of vinegar, water, & dish soap for germination on my other seeds. i'll try it on the punkins. Saturday, April 19 View Page here's my plot Saturday, April 19 View Page here's the other plot Saturday, April 19 View Page and here's my pots - mix of pete moss, perlite, and microwhtmsoargh Thursday, April 24 View Page 0ok...i'm stressing out now. i put my seeds in on Saturday night...and nothing happening yet. i soaked themm first for about 6 hours in a solution of warm water, vinegar and dish soap. then they were planted in peat pots with peat moss, pearlite and microbial fungi. they are on a heat mat in my garage. the garage is about 80 during the day but probably goes down to 60 at night. i was banned from making an incubator with the cooler. the wait is killer. last year when i just put the seeds in the soil there was no stress about this. erg. Tuesday, April 29 View Page erg. half the patch already gone. so after 7 days of waiting and wondering...are they doing anything in there...i took some drastic measures. i pulled the seeds out of the pots if they weren't sprouted. 7 out of 8! I carefully clipped the shells off and put them in warm moist paper towels on the heat mat. after about six hours i checked on them and they were dry as a bone! ack! add water to the paper towels and cover them with plastic wrap. Next day rejoice! it looks like a root is growing out of 1 of 7. After 3 days roots look good enough on this one to put back in the dirt. In all I have 4 out of 8 sprouted in the dirt, the rest rotted. So now I have 2 old 2006 Dill's from the store, and 2 1134 Hortons. Both the 1095 Pappas rotted and 2 of the store bought Dills. Now, hopefully I can keep the 4 in the dirt a long enough to put em outside. hmmm...anyone got any space seeds? Thursday, May 8 View Page well, only after a week all but 2 of the dills died. erg. but not to despair! i put in a 1171 Marsh and a 1155 Frantz. Soaked this time in warm h2o and a little hydrogen peroxide. filed the seeds a little bit more this time and put them in pots that weren't quite so soaked...i think they were a little too wet last time. after a few days wala, they are coming out of the dirt! yay! great success! i am getting ready to put the dill's outside, but i will wait until the soaker pushes through this weekend. Friday, May 23 View Page yeah! we're in the dirt today! weather is warm enough that i won't have to protect it much. now it's time to watch for bugs! Thursday, June 19 View Page ok, we have a new visitor. the ground hog...new to these parts, haven't seen one since we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. i accredited it to a good cat prowler. but alas the cat has failed to stop this one from pulling up on of my plants, roots and all! luckily it was one that was failing anyway. he started to dig at the hill of one of my good plants but something must have spooked him off because that's where the bugger stopped. It rained last night, so today I went around with the capsacin. Hubby will go pick up some chicken wire tonight. Hopefully the bugger will stave off till I get the fence up tomorrow. So now I'm down to 2 plants both doing well...knock on wood. Saturday, June 28 View Page we put up our little chicken wire fence and that seemed to scare away the groundhog, but now we have a baby bunny. today the bunny got in the fence...I don't know how, but we had a blast trying to get it out. the two vines I have are doing well. they are both about 10' long with side vines and I'm burying along the way. May have a blossom on one that's a keeper. Monday, June 30 View Page I made my first pollination this morning. it was the packaged atlantic dill on itself. hooray! Friday, July 11 View Page holy vineage! only one pumpkin and lots of vines. gotta couple of female flowers not open yet. luckily secured the patch with fence from the grounghog. the corn was not so lucky. need to go and get more fence today. knock on wood all the leaves look good, haven't seen any svb's but some leaf stems have suspicious holes. biggest pest has been the striped cucumber beetle. i've been picking them out of the male flowers everyday and giving them a new home in a garbage can. i'll do my first pumkin weight estimate on monday...yay! Saturday, August 9 View Page one of my self pollinated dills stopped growing and the vine died (probably from some sort of bacteria or SVB, though I couldn't find any frass)...so anyway, i took it to the salem county fair in nj, and actually won something with it. i think it's only 56 lbs! first blue ribbon though...yay for little victories. i still have the frantz growing in the back at a good clip...not so pretty looking though. i'll bug spray today and try to burry vines. it seems like burying is the toughest since our soil is so hardpan clay...it has to rain before i can get a shovel in the ground. i keep adding organics, but it will take a while i guess. Tuesday, August 12 View Page so i'm down to one pumpkin. estimated on saturday at 72 lbs. i'll check again tomorrow. it got a lot cooler here. i feed the pumpkin once a week, spray and water, but only average about 3 lbs a day...even on a hot day. what's up with that? gotta check out the feeding boards. Tuesday, September 2 View Page the franz is 110 lbs. still only gaining 2 lbs per day or thereabouts. can't figure why it isn't getting faster/more gains. i keep trimming the excess vines, fertilize weekly and have increased the daily watering. i just let the hose run out there for 40 minutes a day. plant looks healthy. i'm stumped.