Latest Updates:
| Oct. 3rd- We had the first frost last evening, but
it didn't matter to me as all the leaves were dead anyway. I cut
off the W-1 fruit today- my largest fruit this year- and weighed it on the
scale (drum roll, please)...
W-1 green 223 lbs.! I'm happy with that! Katie & I harvested her birdhouse gourds yesterday, and got 8 nice ones this year, off two plants. One plant threw perfectly shaped birdhouse gourds, the other plant threw ones shaped more like gooseneck gourds. |
| Sept. 27th- I yanked the two smallest out of the
garden today. The stems were starting to get mushy and the vines
were gone (rotted away), so clearly no more growth will occur. I
weighed them on my digital bathroom scale:
I-1 green 101 lbs. I'm very pleased with these. I'm especially happy with the nice dark orange color and shape of WP-1. It gained just enough weight so that you can't see the defect caused by the one non-pollinated segment; what a beautiful fruit in the end, and to think I was going to cull it! Pic forthcoming. I still have the largest fruit (green) in the garden. |
| Sept 15th- The powdery mildew has taken its toll;
the garden is pretty much dead, with the fruit barely growing at all in
the past 10 days. Measurements estimating the weight are:
W-1 green 180 lbs. I've been protecting the W-1 fruit from the sun, which has kept it bright green. The I-1 fruit has been fully exposed to sunlight, and has a bit of orange peeking through the green. The WP-1 is a very nice deep orange. While they aren't anywhere near what I'd hoped for size-wise, all will look great carved. Lessons learned: 1) grow as big a plant as possible as early in the season as possible, using a big plastic greenhouse as long as possible 2) SPRAY WITH DACONIL FUNGICIDE STARTING IN EARLY AUGUST, whether it seems that I need it or not. My friend Dave S. has an incredibly healthy and leafy garden STILL because he's been regularly spraying to keep the powdery mildew in check. The difference is like night and day- his garden is vibrant, mine is dead. |
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The dead garden. It wasn't supposed to look like this for another
month!!
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| Aug 31- I obviously don't have big enough plants to grow a really big one this year. When my friend Carl made this observation, I ripped out 2 of my 5 plants (the ones without fruit) to see what I really had, and it was indeed a thin looking garden. In addition, The powdery mildew is uncontrolled (I haven't been spraying for it at all), and once it gets a foothold, there's no stopping it. The mildew has decimated the garden. I shouldn't have terminated the vine growth this year, at least then I would've had some replacement leaves coming. |
| Aug 17th- cut off aborted 337 fruit at a little bigger than cantaloupe size. |
| Aug 16th- Measured the fruit. W-1 and I-1
are both spherical; very nicely shaped.
W-1 squash: 70 1/2" circ,
48 1/2" Top-to-Bottom, 47 1/2" Side-to-Side=166.5 "Over
The Top" total = 103 lbs. |
| Aug 14th- Fertilized! For the first time in a long time- 50 TBS of 20-20-20 run in through the soaker hose. |
| Aug 10th- Terminated all vines- main, secondaries, trimmed tertiaries. Found many vines damaged by SV borers. Killed them or cut them off. I put styrofoam blueboard under all 3 fruit. Much longer and I wouldn't have been able to lift the fruit to do so. |
| Aug 6th- Noted a few cuke beetles today- the first I've seen.
It's been raining for the past few days. When it clears, I'll
spray. Powdery mildew seen on a few more leaves. Still see a
SVB moth flitting around. I looked at my notes from 2000, and I'm
actually 5 days ahead of my pollination date for my PB 411 in that year, so
I have a chance for a nice one after all! I need to fertilize
heavily now; once the rain stops. See pic below of the 3 fruit
that I've got going. W-1 was poll'd 7/21, and is growing on the 535 Wolf plant- it's 45 3/4" in circumference. WP-1 was poll'd (approx) 7/4, and is growing on the 544 Wilbers plant- it's 60" in circ., but the bottom isn't growing. I-1 was poll'd 7/21, and is growing on my 411 Inzero plant- it's 41" in circ.; less than W-1, but is expected since the plant is somewhat smaller than the 535. The fruit are not all this close together; I've stitched 3 separate photos together here. |
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| Aug 3rd- I discovered a 4 lobe flower open on the 732, which I added a couple males to. I finished weeding the garden, then went through the whole thing, tracing vines back to see where they came from- things grew wild while I was on vacation and I'm just catching up now. The green fruit mentioned on 7/28 has aborted at about cantaloupe size, and I culled it. The good news is that I have 2 other green fruit on now, both about basketball size... one on the 535, and another on (surprise!) my own 411! I wasn't aware that the 411 was growing in that direction. Both are nice and round. I discovered that someone with a diary on bigpumpkins.com is growing my 411 this year as well, and has some pictures up. I've been adjusting the position of the fruit on the 535 for a couple days now to keep it away from the vine; it's got a nice long stem. The yellow fruit pictured on 7/28 turns out to be on the 544 vine. The 732 still has no fruit set; it was very late producing any females blossoms at all. The 535 vine is the longest of all my plants; I've had to turn the vine backwards about 5' so far to keep in in the garden. The other vines are just reaching the end now. I dug out 2 big SVB GRUBS today- one in the 411 stump, one in the 337 vine out quite a ways. Saw one SVB moth, and noticed that 1 leaf has powdery mildew; too late to stop it now, but once the rain clears I'll break out the Captan fungicide anyway. I discovered the birdhouse gourds' flowers open in the late evening rather than early AM like the pumpkins. Quite different. |
7/28- I saw another SVB moth around today. I
fertilized w/liquid kelp yesterday. While many female flowers have
opened, only 2 have set for sure- one yellow, and one green fruit.
The problem is, the green one has the stem cut 1/3 of the way through,
and the yellow one is incompletely pollinated (growing lopsided), plus
has a terrible angle to the vine (it will snap off as it grows).
Both will eventually have to be culled. I guess with no good fruit
set yet at this "late" date, that I won't be growing a REALLY
huge one this year, but I can still beat my personal best I hope.
This is a bit disappointing as I had not only made up the week I was
late in germinating, but I'd surpassed all other years' vine size due to
the use of the greenhouses. We've got a couple bird house gourd
plants this year, and I can see that a female will be opening tomorrow;
pretty cool! My biggest American Chestnuts are 16" tall.
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| 7/25-26- two green females opened. |
| 7/21- Green female open on 535, bees galore rolling around in it- I haven't seen honey bees in this quantity here in all the years I've been growing AGs. I located one unused male from the 535 and hand pollinated with it in addition. Also found females open on 544 (the third fruit on the vine), and the 411. |
| 7/20- first female opens on the 732- a huge/perfect 5 lobe blossom. I hope the bees found it, as I didn't until a day later! |
| 7/19- first Squash Vine Borer moth spotted today!! Still no sign of cuke beetles. |
| 7/15- female opened on 337. I let the bees pollinate some, then added pollen from two 535 males. |
| 7/14- female opened. I didn't notice, hope the bees found it. |
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| July 12- returned from vacation; the garden is FULL!! The vines grew 10-12' more in the past 2 weeks. The weeds are HUGE. This is going to take some time to clean up and straighten out. The soaker hose worked very well. There's a lot of damage from unattended growth- 3 vines climbed up a 4' fence, others through/over the 2' chicken wire fence, the 337 squash main vine grabbed onto itself with a tendril, circled, and snapped itself off. A couple females aborted, probably not pollinated for one reason or another. |
| June 27-July 11- vacation; did not attend to garden at all. I fertilized w/15-30-15, then sprayed the whole garden w/Sevin insecticide (I'd seen some baby stink bugs hurting a leaf), cracked open the faucet leading to the 225' of buried soaker hose in the garden, and left it alone for 2 weeks. |
| June 26- Noticed one pea-sized female blossom on
the 337 and one on the 411; they're both green. Noticed one
half-pea size female on the 544 and also on 732; they're both
yellow. Looks good so far! June 25- First male blossom in the garden opened on the 544. Looks like the first on the 337 will open tomorrow. From this point, it should be around 9 days until the first female opens. Right on schedule. Looks like I managed to make up the week I was late in germination! |
| June 23- started burying the vines and weeding. I culled the 1012. |
| June 22- I took off both of the hoop houses- the plants were growing too big. I finally got to measure them again- |
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Pumpkins:
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Squash: 411- 5' 7" 337- 5'4" 535- 7' 
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| June 17- Found the 1012 main vine snapped off- a
tendril on the tip had grabbed a leaf and the vine snapped as it
grew. Main vine is also twisted/bent and split. Looks like a
candidate for culling. The 732 and 544 pumpkin plants are both strong
and straight vines. The 544 has nearly outgrown the 8'
shelter. Leaf nodes are starting to root despite my lack of
burying so far (I can't get in there to do it.)
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| June 10-
Pumpkins- 732- 27" vine 1012- 34" vine 544- 37" vine
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Squash- 411- 19" vine 337- 25" vine 535- 36" vine, but main twisted near stump |
May 7th- The mini-greenhouses are working great- it's very warm in there, including the soil. The dicot leaves have lifted up and opened up now. May 5th- SPROUTS PUT IN GARDEN- Last evening, I checked on the seeds, and the roots have grown quite large- they are ready to go into the dirt. Since the garden is ready, the weather is nice (~60 degF), and no frost in sight, I decided to put the sprouts right in the garden (under mini-greenhouses), rather than put them in peat pots and then transplant later. I'm thinking this will avoid the root bound seedling pitfall (kept too long in peat pots) I've hit almost every year so far. This should more than make up for starting the seeds a week late. The dicot leaves aren't even open yet. Perhaps I'll avoid the sunburning that's hit my seedling stems the past few years as well. I've got the green fruit at the west end of the garden, and the orange fruit at the east end. For some reason the plants on the west end always grow the larger fruit. May 4th- I tilled in about 1 1/2 yards "real" composted cow manure- I had it delivered from a local dairy farm (thanks for the tip, Dave!). In the past, I've always used pre-bagged manure from Agway. This "real" stuff was less than half the price. I made sure I asked for well composted manure as it's really a little late to be putting manure in now. I sure hope I don't burn the plants. The stuff I got was just great- it didn't smell too bad at all. I got to try out my new (used) Sears rototiller. I found that it would only run well if I had around 1/4 of a tank of gas in it- fill it any more and the old Briggs & Stratton engine would barely run. Whoever tuned it up last time must have not had the specified amount of gas in it during the procedure. At least I was able to figure out the problem and work around it to finish the job. This rototiller works much better than the Merry Tiller that I've rented all the other years. May 2nd-3rd- GERMINATION- The oven bulb's warmth worked really great, with 3 seeds germinating within 30 hours. The 337/1012/544 went first, then 535/411/732 by the next day. The 771 doesn't appear to be germinating. |
| May 1st- SEED START- I filed the edges, soaked them in warm water
for about 4 hours, then put them in
damp paper towel in a ziploc bag in the oven with the light bulb on- this keeps
it at about 84 degrees F. I'm about a week or so late in starting
the seeds. My seed choices for this year:
Green: |
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