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Ohio

Its that time of year again for me that once the pumpkin starts growing like mad the plant it self ends up shutting down,,, happens to me every year and I expect nothing less,,lol.
But I wasn't counting on it happening to 2 plants a couple days apart, losing half the main vines on both and the stumps, but it happened.

One weird thing about this deal is that the stumps and main turn to mush, the roots itself where snow white and very healthy looking. The inside of the main vine and stump looked like they was soaking in gasoline for a couple days, when I went to feel the main my fingers went through them like butter.(no vine borers)

I really dont think it was Fusarium or that other nasty disease caused by cuke Beatles, because one, I haven't seen but one or two cuke beatles in my patch all summer, and two, there wasn't a orangish color rot inside the main, roots, or mushy leaf stems (Fusarium). The rotting seemed to start from the middle of the main vine and work itself back to the stump, because the stump didnt look half as bad as the main vine did, the stump was just starting to rot when I cut into it, the middle part of my main vine was gone.

Ive never had this disease before but I'm thinking it was yellow vine disease maybe??

8/4/2009 10:08:07 PM

Ohio

on the one plant this happened to was my 985 Werner just 2 days ago, I lost half my main and stump and I'm still amazingly getting 25 to30 lbs a day for the last two days, and the pumpkin is way ahead of the 1200lb bench marks at day 30,,, so will this pumpkin continue to grow like this on just half a main?,,, or is it giving its last hurrah before she stops growing completely??,,lol.


One good thing is that the other half of my main before the pumpkin looks very healthy so far, how long that will last only time will tell,,,lol . I would be amazed if this pumpkin keeps growing like it is now after what happened to it, totally amazed. I'm getting 4 inch Circumference a day still and thats not counting my front to back and side to side measurement. Amazing so far, it really is.

8/4/2009 10:08:53 PM

South Bloomfield, Ohio

It's time to air out those mains Brooks. With all the rain we had in July, I'm going down the main vine and cutting all leaves immediately on either side of it. Plenty of leaves on the plants to worry about less daily gain. Beats taking a chance on losing vines.

8/5/2009 5:29:07 AM

Upstate S.C.

Brooks, the same thing happened to me on my 820 Van Kooten. This was a replacement plant, so it was put in late. However it quickly caught up with the other two and then flew past them. The thing that was weird with the plant was I couldn't get any pumpkins to pollinate on the main. I tried at least 7 or 8 times. Another thing that was odd was the stump. This thing kelp growing and growing, it was hugh. About a week ago I notice the bottem half of the plans's leaves and secondarys looks like they were dyeing. So went to the center of the plant and started inspecting the main and sure enough, the main was MUSH, brown in color and smelled horrible. I quickly cut the main. Then two days ago the stump split right down the center. Just blew up. Im gonna pull it soon, but i'll try and post some pics first.

8/5/2009 6:58:58 AM