Jeff's Great Pumpkin Challenge

This spring and now early summer have been brutal on growing giant pumpkins!  Top that off and I've been sickly for over 2 weeks which started with a brown spider bite (which is going to leave a nasty scar on my shin) concluding with being ill with constant neck pain and constant headache and fever (systematic secondary infection) for about 10 days.   I finally got back in the garden this evening - and it's not pretty out there! Since May 1, there have been 25 days that had wind 40 MPH or higher!  That is crazy!  Some of those days had heavy rain while others had scorching heat!  There have been 10 days of more than 50 MPH wind and 5 days of 65 MPH gusts!  The weather and general lack of care from me have left the pumpkins in not-so-good of shape.  I also had an infestation of squash bugs on one plant! The 1733 is doing the best, as far as color and such although I already lost the tip of one of  the secondary vines.  Here is that plant (note all the mud on the leaves - I&#

This weather so far this spring has been brutal on EVERYTHING!  We had one of the driest fall/winter/spring periods on record! We started with one of the top coldest Aprils on record. Then we had a record warmest May at Dodge City (and it obliterated the previous record).  Hot and windy days, high humidity at times, thunderstorms with a lot of wind!  The previous post I did on the 29th (you can read it by clicking here ) I was scrambling to build some protection from the elements (hail at that time and now a hot wind).  It did help, thankfully! This past Wednesday night we had a high wind event from a collapsing thunderstorm during the night with 70-75 MPH winds here at the Hacienda but even higher winds southwest of here!  I had to leave in the dark yesterday morning so wasn't sure what I would find when I came home.  The only damage we had was a downed poplar tree and a pool full of debris (took about 1 1/2 hours to clean that up).  But the pumpkins?  They came through with no