Twenty pounds a day!

The last posting on July 4 (read it by clicking here) the pumpkin plants were ALL vigorous and healthy.  As of yesterday (8th) they continued to flourish.  At this point all 4 plants have pollinated and growing pumpkins.  The 1990 and 595 plants have 1 each; the 1989.5 has 3 pumpkins; and the 450 plant has 5 pumpkins pollinated and growing.  Why so many on the two plants?  I'm trying to determine which one to keep and need a few more days of growing to see which ones will stay and which ones will be aborted (culled).  I'll be making that decision really soon.

The winner plant so far is the 1990 Marintzer and its pumpkin was pollinated with the 1989.5 Deletas.  That pumpkin as of yesterday (8th) was 21.5 days old (evening) and taped at about 150 pounds as seen in the picture below.  On the 4th it was at 72 pounds.  More importantly it is putting on 20 pounds a day for the last 3 days!



But for me to be perfectly satisfied I would want to see a daily weight gain of 30 to 40 pounds a day! Hopefully that goal will be reached within the next week to 10 days.   It's been at 20 pounds/day since the 5th. 

The pumpkin labeled 595 in the image is on my 595 Hutton plant and it was also pollinated with the 1989.5 Deletas.  As of yesterday it was 8 days old and was approximately 7 pounds and starting to gain/grow at an exponential rate (typical growth).  At this stage it is ahead of the growth rate of the 1990 which is encouraging.

I did have to rebuild the shade cover to keep the hot July sun off of the pumpkins as I originally didn't give them enough room to grow (duh I didn't think ahead).

As mentioned, the other two pumpkin plants (the 450 Clements and 1989.5 Deletas) have multiple pumpkins growing.  I will determine which ones to keep, probably by Monday the 12th.  The plants themselves are extremely healthy and vigorous - much more so than I've ever had for this time of the season.  I would have liked to have had pumpkins pollinated earlier on these plants but that's the way it goes.

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