From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Lloydminster/AB

Well, I had an absolutely huge split on a nice pumpkin on my 162 J Mackinnon. That's not really the point of this post though. The fruit was 99% green, was growing as fast as ever( running sprinklers to avoid a frost that never happened may have been the wrong thing to do) and was pollinated July 25. That gives me 60+ days of growth and it easily had another 15 in it.

I had written this fruit off because an early July set that was on the main vine matured early and was completely orange at 35 or so days. Only about 50 lbs as well. We had a nice June and my plants ended up much larger than they should have and with 20' of MV I felt a need to pollinate. Finally at my target date I pollinated again on some secondaries in convenient locations. I had almost forgotten about them when suddenly they rose from the patch in early sept.

I have a few fruit set on other plants and the ones set just a few days before the 25 are all orange and the ones set a few days later aren't even remotely ready to turn orange.
Which brings me to the point. Temperature and day length make huge differences to field pumpkins. My AGs seem to run the same life cycle no matter when they are pollinated but field pumpkins need a specific lucky combo. Their growth cycle really varies a lot.
By the way , we still havent had a killing frost. We usually have seen snow by now, most years!

9/27/2012 10:59:15 PM

Western PA

I had a very similar experience.
I set one on the main vine (around July 15th), and it was my chosen one. It was very hot and the fruit was totally orange in 35 days and around 90 pounds est. After it was done growing I decided to just let the plant grow and see how many fruits I could get. I picked around 15 pumpkins this past weekend, and they all still had some green in them.I was afraid the frost was going to hurt them.
I weighed some of them. The 2 biggest are in the low 80's and most are around 70 pounds ! I must have got 1000 pounds of pumpkins from that one plant (81 wolf).All on 3rd or 4th stage vines ! I even had 2 of them split in the last 2 weeks !

The chosen pumpkin is still hooked up to the main. I picked it up a little and it feels like it lost a lot of weight.

And yes, all these later pollinations have been growing for 50 days or better. I agree with you Don.

I will start my plant 2-3 weeks later next year and see if they grow longer. My fruit on the main did not like the heat in July. Aug was much cooler and we got rain as well.

10/9/2012 9:13:02 AM