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South of Buffalo

Hi all, this is my first year growing AG's. I got seed from 800+# pumpkins(P+P) and planted in an area of the garden I have grown field pumpkins for years. I ended up with 2 pumpkins between 100-150#. This is small as i have pushed field pumokins up to 50-60#'s in the same spot. thevines were about 15-18 nfeet long but alomost no secondary growth, just a straight vine. any thoughts??
I will be augmenting with manure and compost for next year. and will use seed from the seed exchange page, thanks

9/10/2010 8:35:14 PM

Fresno, CA

One thing would be to do soil test to see if any nutrients are deficient or excessive. With the no secondary growth - I am curious did you spray anything on the plant in the early season? I ask because I had some extremely stunted secondaries that never vined out from early spraying of organic insecticide on the young terminals. I should have sprayed only mature leaves.

9/11/2010 12:52:48 AM

Buffalo, New York

Sounds like my problem was this year Jeff = VERY LOW nitrogen!!

9/11/2010 5:56:40 AM

Western PA

Jeffp, Did you set a fruit on the main that was rather close to the stump, maybe 6 or 7 feet out ?

I did, and when the fruit started to put on the pounds the side vines quit growing. The main did continue to grow though. The fruit was sucking all the energy from the plant. Once the fruit got to 550 pounds or so, the sidevines started to grow again , and I started to get female blossems on the sides. I am not sure if that was the reason but that was my experience.

9/11/2010 8:09:10 PM

3 acre corner in Whittaker,Mi USA (faulkner5@msn.com)

Hey jeff,
My season started out in the same way but knowing hindsight I had very minimal patch prep with lower levels of nitrogen to start with. My growth finally began to pick up steam but I was already 2 weeks behind. Many lessons learned for my first year and I have begun my new patch preparations right now on my south patch (amending, e.t.c)
Next season should be vastly improved over this one!

9/11/2010 10:36:37 PM

South of Buffalo

-my plants were late as the first 3 seeds i started initially germinated and then stopped growing(no plant just the 2 cotyledons)Replacemnet seed needed to be mailed and started which resulted in teh plants going in the 15th of june.
-I planted too close together(limited space) with intent to cull to 1 plant.
-the pumpkins were about 10 feet out from teh stump.
-I prepped with a compost soil blend from a nursery i have used in teh past. it may have been too wet/heavy/compacted ? the space has grown field pumpkins for years so it was pretty good to start.I expected at least 3-400#
-I used 5-10-15 granular, mirecle gro, fish emulsion and kelp, garden pride for PM and orthomax for borers. Burying teh vines resulted in 0 borers(so very little insectide) and teh PM was well controlled.
I dont think teh N was low as the garden is packed with other veggies that did fine as well as teh field pumpkins last year.

9/12/2010 10:02:38 AM

Ashby, MA

Hi Jeff, this same sort of thing was happening to me this year. I realized that when I was burying the main vine I was burying the start of any secondaries. I stop doing that and started getting secondaries growing. In summary, careful not to bury the start of the secondaries.

9/12/2010 10:19:33 PM

Eastern Pennsylvania

Jeff get a soil test done. It will cost you $17 from A&L Eastern labs and save you a lot of agony.

9/13/2010 1:21:10 PM

South of Buffalo

The soil has been sent. I used a+l west, the eastern lab prices and web site seem a little out of date so I went with the west lab, 38$ shipping included. Couldn't find much on teh eastern here on teh web site, maybe ill use them in teh future

9/17/2010 9:06:23 AM