Wednesday, June 30, 2010

In Today's Garden

Pumpkins (Dill's Atlantic Giant)
Yellow Summer Squash (Slick Pik)

Here's the view of a new planting area that I activated this year. I call it Cucurbit Corner because it's the site of four giant pumpkin plants and eight summer squash plants. Yeah, it's hard to tell them apart in this photo - the pumpkins are in the background/left, and four of the squash are in the foreground/right.

I started these from seeds that I got from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine. That's pretty much the only place where I buy seeds, and I like their stuff.

This is the third year I've grown giant pumpkins. My record so far is one that weighed 116 pounds, which is a far, far cry from the serious contenders that are fast approaching the one ton mark.

But then again, the people who grow them at this level strike me as being just a wee bit nuts. But I guess we need obsessives, because that's how records are broken, eh?

These giant pumpkins are useless for eating - they're all fibrous string and water inside. But they do make for an interesting conversation piece.

My personal goal is to hit 350 pounds with one, but I don't spend too much time or attention making that happen. I try to keep the plants fed every few weeks with a nice dose of my brother-in-law's awesome liquid fish plant food. And this new planting area has a lot of natural moisture, since pumpkins like to be well-watered (but not too much, else they grow too fast and split).

I also started just spraying against those freaking squash vine borers. I've seen the wasp recently, laying its eggs at the base of these plants. I use a botanical spray, not one based on petrochemicals. We'll see if that makes any difference. In the first year, when I grew the 116-pounder, that plant had a couple of infested vines but still managed to hang in. I grew last year's plants from saved seeds, and didn't get a pumpkin bigger than a beach ball.

They're actually pretty tasty when their harvested just as they start developing.

I'm hoping to the train the vines to grow out onto the grass, which is one of the reasons that I chose this area for them. They get very long and can overrun everything they encounter, which sucks when they encounter my tomato plants.

The yellow summer squash have started putting out fruit, and I'll try to keep picking them off while still small. I might even snag a few babies tomorrow, since there will be plenty more to follow.

There are also four plants of another variety of pumpkin, this one more suitable for eating, growing in the spot where I stood to take this picture. It's called Baby Pam, and the flesh is smooth and sweet and perfect for pies.

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