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In memory of Patrick T., My Dad, the original Happy Tomato

 
  
 
 
 
 

 
 
t5's Giant Pumpkin Projects

Stu's Pumpkinmania! site and contest

http://pumpkinmania.blogspot.com/

2009 - HOW TO KEEP SNAILS OFF YOUR GIANT PUMPKIN

Wow! How to recover from the fiasco of the milk feeding Giant Pumpkin Experiment! All those kids, all that work, all that disappointment! Well, ask a few more kids to join the Giant Pumpkin Growing fun, and keep on charging!

This year, finding time for Pumpkin Kids was a bit more challenging, so we ended up meeting thrice in the first 2 1/2 months! Once to plant the pumpkin seeds, once to discuss and chart the mode, mean and median of the previous year's seedlings, and once to plant the giant pumpkin seedlings into the ground!

We decided that, since the 2008 pumpkin was snail-challenged, that it might be a good idea to design a project to id the best method to prevent snails from eating the baby giant pumpkins! One of the kids... thought a pumpkin house to protect the pumpkin would be a good idea! We discussed this a bit, and figured that a few crates stacked together would make a nice pumpkin house! We would line the pumpkin house with copper tape. The control pumpkin would simply sit on a single palet, no copper tape.

Aug 8, 2009 - Many frustrating pumpkin-vine-watching weeks later... We FINALLY! have a baby giant pumpkin! And it is growing fast! Not as fast as some of the pumpkins on Stu's Pumpkinmania! blog, but respectable!

2008 - MILK FED GIANT PUMPKIN

I'd been talking to some neighbors who lived near the park after the 2007 pumpkin fun. They suggested milk-feeding our giant pumpkin. I'd never heard of it, but was game to try anything. I spent much tiime researching milk-feeding to see if there was any merit to it. Trust me... there's not that much out there!

Most of the neighbors thought I was crazy... Well, that's true, but... we digress... I researched and found just two or three references to milk feeding:

a/ Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Almanzo takes his milk-fed pumpkin to the fair and wins a prize! He's torn with anxiety about whether to share the fact that it was milk-fed.

b/Tales of Taliesin by Cornelia Brierly, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

c/ Farm journals and internet blogs.

I found some websites that had some instructions for milk feeding pumpkins. There were, apparently, three ways you could milk-feed a pumpkin.

a/ The one that seemed to be the 'real' way to milk feed was to slit the stem of the vine with the pumpkin and to put a wick into the slit... Seal the hole back up with sap (or something like that) and put the other end of the wick into a pot of milk and sugar. Add milk/sugar mix as the pot becomes empty.

b/Pour milk around the base of the vine.

c/ Spray the leaves of the pumpkin with milk.

The kids decided that c/ (spray the leaves of the pumpkin with milk) was the best way to go.

I must say, we put a lot of effort into that there pumpkin, but the pumpkins never got farther than a 3-4 inch diameter. They succumbed to a combination of insufficient watering and SNAILS!

Definitely not a successful year for growing giant pumpkins.

2007 - COMMUNITY GIANT PUMPKIN

 

 

 

In the second year of the Giant Pumpkin, neighbor J. suggested that we plant it over in the untended city space next to Y.'s home. We asked for the use of her water, and she agreed! We had to ask Stu for another giant pumpkin seedling, because the previous year's pumpkin seeds were unsalvageable (they'd all sprouted by the time I opened the giant pumpkin). I picked two nice seedlings up at Stu's office. It took a few weeks to get around to planting them, but we did eventually get them into the ground.

The pumpkin went in on the evening of Memorial Day. We put out the word to the 'community' but only two or three of us showed up.

Watering was spotty on my part, but I think that Y. was helping us out a lot with the watering. The pumpkin leaves were big and beautiful, and we got a beautiful pumpkin after several weeks. More water and the pumpkin grew and grew! We displayed it at the neighborhood picnic... Lots of fun!

There was a lot of discussion on what to do, but we finally decided to carve it and place it on the lawn of the local fire station. We did a little weighing competition. I think it was about 162 lbs by the time we carved it. A few of the local kids came by and helped. I saved lots of seeds from this pumpkin!

2006- CONTAINER GROWN GIANT PUMPKIN
I received a Giant Pumpkin seedling from Stuart Shim of my dragon boat team, the Golden Dragons. Stuart had been sending us emails on how busy he’d been giving talks about Giant Pumpkins and getting folks to grow giant pumpkins, in the hope that they would grow a giant pumpkin for the contest.

The instructions went something like this… dig a hole 3’ by 3’ by 5’ deep. I laughed hysterically and thought… this can’t be real! I asked how people would get their 1000 lb pumpkin to the competition. Stu informed me that they would get a forklift to lift the pumpkin and put it on the back of a pickup truck. I asked who paid for the forklift rental. He told me that if I grew a 1000 lb giant pumpkin I would rent a forklift to bring it to competition.

So began the first of the Giant Pumpkin Experiments.

The seedlings sat for a couple of weeks, quickly outgrowing their peat pots. I discussed with my husband on where to plant this pumpkin. I don’t know why he didn’t like the idea of digging a hole in our front yard… Or our side yard, for that matter! Thus was the inspiration for the 2009 experiment.

The 2009 experiment was to see how big a giant pumpkin I could grow in a container.

The seedling that Stuart gave me had a popsicle stick with the following legend: “ “.

I thought and thought about what container I could use. None seemed big enough.

I eventually settled on a not-too-expensive trash can on wheels. I think it was a 46 gallon Rubbermaid… We drilled holes in the bottom to permit the water to drain, and I filled it up with mulch. A secret. Old wives talk about ‘planting a fish’ to help vegetables grow. I happened to have one in the fridge, so I ‘planted’ it deep in the tub.

The Giant Pumpkin Giant Leaves came pretty quickly! They were enormous! Flowers and baby pumpkins camae shortly after! The final weight of the pumpkin was 50 lbs! A far cry from 1000 lbs, but still, not bad for a container pumpkin!

I saved that pumpkin until Halloween then Thanksgiving. We cut it open at Thanksgiving, but all the seeds had sprouted inside the pumpkin. This was pretty disappointing for me because I couldn’t save the seeds.