Growing slow

The last week and a half has been a clump of fairly crappy days. Spots of warm weather but nothing consistent. I named the large pumpkin Diane since my last post. I've been hitting the pumpkin pretty heavy with compost tea and kelp. Lots of showers the past few days so there's more than enough H20. I pollenated another female flower and it's grown to about the size of a large grapefruit. It could catch a growth spurt and whip out a ridiculous number-however it's pretty late in the year to start praying for size. Size is made in the early part of a warm year; Im at the tail end of a cold year.

41.5

After a good blast of hot weather this last week the pumpkin measures 118 inches = 41.5 pounds. We've upped the water each also and I'm still brewing compost tea and giving them tea x2 each week and spraying the leaves with kelp extract and Alaska Fish Fertilizer. The warmer weather and a good dose of water has this plant jumping out of the ground. I love for it to stay warm. It seems like we're getting a lot of sucker vines - all those little pumpkins have to be picked off because they rob pumpkin big of nutriments. It's a good start after a pretty crappy spring of cool weather=reminder heat coils next year.

Growing fruit

We got some fruit growing on these vines, despite the cool weather of June and early August.The 866 Biss has a great punkn on it - I'm happy with it's growth- you just never know, it could all end tomorrow. Big time growers would scoff at my plant.I'll be watering alot over the next week as the temp will be in the 90's. We should be seeing some real growth. I have tree plants at my house; my kids have two small plants and I have three plants at a friends house a busy schedule no less! Whew!

Water

These Mutha's need water and lots of it!. When they're really packin' it on at mid season they can gain more than 30 lbs in a day and most of it's water. The cleaner and more pure the water the better off you are er- well the pumpkin is better off. They grow fast on those days but you can't actually see them grow. I'm giving my plants a ton of organics right now to develop the root system to enable the uptake of nutriments-tea, kelp, fish fertilizer and shreaded pages from the novel "Myst". This week with the good weather I've been burying a lot of vines.

Growing the Vine

The vine on The 866 Biss is out 12 feet from the stump, maybe a shade more. I pulled the 1136 Sherwood the other day because I needed the room in the patch. Compost tea has been my friend and I think aided the growth during a very chilly month of June. The 845 Larue has just jumped out of the grond the last week adding 3.5 ft to its vine length-very impressive!

Heat

It's been 90+ the last couple of days. I buried the vines on the 890 Biss and put Myco on the lateral vines. I 've been feeding a mixture of Seaweed Extract and Alaska Fish Fert spraying it foliarly with a 2 gallon weed sprayer. It is amazing how the plants respond to the spray treatments. After application (at the days beginning or end) the leaves take on such a deep green color and they stand up and look quite healthy.The 845 Larue is making up for lost time - it's rocking across the patch making almost a foot in the last day- BUT REMEMBER it's not the size of the vine it's the weight of the Pumpkin. And, that's all that matter's ! Go big or go home! Get large or get on the Barge!

It's alive !

Looking at the 866 Biss the vine is out about 5 feet. There's a female flower near the vine tip. Ideally, you really want the fruit to be out there at least 10 feet from the stump.I've been watering with my compost tea about a gallon/day on all four plants. The plants truly need warm days and so far the western washington weather has been Cool & Cloudy. However the last 4 days have all been over 70 so the plants have begun to crawl across the patch. Now if the night would stay warmer we'd be in business.