Jeff's Great Pumpkin Challenge

I have the giants (and field pumpkins, okra, tomatoes, etc.) on a drip system that runs every morning so I keep a consistent water profile.  However, this month (after the 6th) has been very wet.  Another 1.58" fell Sunday evening/night.  The soil is saturated.  Now I fear that this water logged soil is now compacted (it has a fair amount of clay) and is "choking" the massive root system of the giant pumpkins.  It's also been overcast the past few days. A week ago in that post (read it by clicking  here ), the pumpkin on the 1257 plant was ~ 39 pounds at DAP13.  With the rapid and exponentially increasing weight gain, I thought there was a chance that the pumpkin would be as high as 160 pounds as of this morning (DAP20).  But, it looks like it has slowed down on growth (hopefully temporary).   This morning the estimated weight was 119 pounds.  That is now behind the weight of the state fair 542.5 pound pumpkin from 3 years ago....

Well, first off it's been a crazy week in July across the area.  Copious amounts of rain has fallen (but with high winds) across the area.  At my location,  I measured 4.25 inches during this past week (for SW KS in July that is a lot) but with 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 inches within the county!  This rain has mitigated hot temperatures and as a result the giants have responded - as well as the field pumpkins and WEEDS!  I'm pretty pumped at this point as a couple pumpkins have REALLY accelerated in growth! The 250 Wallace plant is "out-of-control" in growth!  Look at the plant this morning and compare to just 8 days ago! Click here to see what it looked like on the 14th. The very first pumpkin to get pollinated on the 5th was open pollinated (by bees) and had been slow growing.  It appears to be done so I'm removing it.  It actually lost weight during the past few days.  Here it was this morning... It was around 16 pounds.  Bye-bye pu...

The struggle continues with the giants this year but progress had been made since the last post on the 29th.  Each plant now has a potential female pumpkin as described below... This morning here was the 250 plant and it has made a lot of growth since the 29th.. The first pumpkin on this plant was one pollinated by bees and it occurred as I was not home on that morning of the 5th.  Thus, I don't know what the pollinator host plant was, although it's likely it was carried by bees from its own male flowers (250 x 250).  That is not preferred (not knowing as genetics are in question).  Here was that pumpkin this morning sitting at an estimated 1.8 pounds on DAP8 (8 days after pollination)... A weight of 1.8 pounds at DAP8 is not good (pathetic I would say).  I will likely terminate this pumpkin.  A second pumpkin (but on a secondary vine) was pollinated this morning (by me) from pollen from the 1713.5 Lancaster plant.  If this one take...

June weather - it's been crazy!  Dodge City will end up being the 5th or 6th windiest June on record.  There have been some extreme wind events (19 days with 40 MPH and higher gusts) with the storm on the 21st producing the strongest (70-75 MPH here at the hacienda).  On top of that has been just one wet period with the remainder being exceedingly dry.  The giant pumpkins have suffered ill effects.  But despite Ma Nature throwing just about everything at my attempt to grow a giant, the plants have made progress.  If you go to the the post I did on the 18th (you can read it by clicking  here ) I have a comparison from the 1st through the 18th.  Since the 18th further good growth has take place.  But - gosh there ALWAYS seems to be a "but".... About 5 days ago I fed them a concoction from Agronis, a company that produces various agriculture supplements.  I obviously used too much, well I'm guessing.  A few days later and the main ...

What a brutal June so far!  The average wind speed here in Dodge City for the month of June through the 17th was 18.7 MPH - the second windiest month of record!  Along with the wind, the daily high temperature has been from 95-100 every day!  This has taken a toll on the giant pumpkin growing.  This is on top of the ridiculous start to spring with record cold in parts of May.  See the posting from  June 1st (you can see that by clicking  here ) for more on that.  But, there may be a slight ray of hope! First, the two early pumpkins planted on May 7 (just as the really cold was returning), have made progress despite the terrible June growing weather.  The growth has been steady, but SLOW!   Yesterday morning (June 17), here was the plant started from the 250 pound Wallace seed... The 1257.5 Wallace plant has a REALLY funky stem with weird branching.  Instead of round, the stem (even the spits) are flat.  I've never seen ...

May weather has not been favorable for the giant pumpkin plants.  Also, considering that when I put them in the ground the plants did not appear to be healthy, I'm not surprised by the ho-hum growth.  I'm not sure if the unhealthiness was because of inferior seeds or there was some other issue.  They are growing, but at a relative slow growth.  For June 1st, they should be really taking off.  Hopefully, in a few days maybe things will change but this week will be hot and windy. Stupid SW KS weather! Because of the unknown issues, I decided to start 3 more seeds on May 23.  I started a seed from my old 542.5 pounder; a seed from the 1068 (that seed produced my 542.5 pounder in 2017); and a seed from a 1713.5 pound pumpkin.  All three looked really healthy!  The 1713.5 plant appeared to be the most vigorous of the 3 (barely), so I planted it yesterday evening (the 31st) in a "new" part of the garden.  This area had previously been the hybr...

Geez this miserable pumpkin growing weather!  In the previous post (read it by clicking  here ), I mentioned the rough start to the season and how the two potential pumpkin plants were not looking healthy.  I put them in the ground on the 7th but as mentioned in the previous post, just in time or COLD May weather.  And it was miserably cold!   Almost this entire month some days were really chilly and overnight lows have been below average.  Thus, the soil temperature has been below normal.  The plants were covered by two large pots for about 5 days.  Even today the plants are growing only very slowly.  Here is the 250.... And the 1257.... There were two other plants that germinated but they look even worse!  I don't know what the issue is.  I went ahead and started 3 more pumpkins of different genetics, just in case.  If they take off and I replaced these two above, the planting would be REALLY late for giants!  We...