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.  Here is the picture of the 1257 pump

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 pumpkin! Yesterday I pollin

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 takes and grows faster, I will