2014 The GC Pumpkin growing and carving challenge

'the best fertilizer is a gardeners shadow'

OK, well that's that cleared up.

 

Lable the Bordeaux mixture Magnesium sulphate, that'll learn her, she'll come out looking like a Smurf

 

And then yell at me for not noticing. I wonder if I have to get a hive because I never see honey bees anymore, but I think the problem with setting fruit is chemical. I had volunteer pumpkins growing but they would not set fruit either so ripped them out. The melons are the only Cucurbitaceae I get any fruit set on except for a bitter cucumber and the lemon cuke, and it hardly has any - and why them I have no idea.

 

My Citric acid was labled, "No Becky, not sugar."

You have to strip the petals from a male flower and rodger a femail flower with it to ensure polination with cucurbits, it's the only way to be sure.

If you only got male flowers, put some in the fridge till the girly ones come

 

seems to be taking a bit of a liberty there Zigs, but I will give it a go but have little hope.

But what fruit does appear is tiny, 1 cm long, and sickly yellowish, and then is gone, presumed fallen. Do you check your soil's mg and such? I have this persistent feeling it is excess PO4 from massively composting and then cropping. My theory being the P is bonding with the calcium and causing chronic blossom end rot. I think my ph is close to being right (6.8 last time I was able to test) so dumping dolomitic lime is not good, eggshell too slow. But them it could be the mg - so the Epsom salts, which I now have (3 pounds for $3 at the Dollar Store (for bathing supplement)) I am too cheap to buy Ca leaf spray. I am off to mix the Epsom with water and spray topically - then water with E water. This is really annoying me. Could be Boron deficiency - what the heck. Zink?

 

Anyone else have any updates on their progress?

Steve...

 

I fleeced my pumpkins last night,it got down to 9 degrees...In June I ask you

 

Here wre some photo's from today. I noticed on Sunday (3 days ago) that vine growth was speeding up and so staked some markers at each of the plants growing tips.



Current vine length of the 987 is 5 foot, with 12 inches of growth in the last three days, its first secondary vine can be seen on the left of the photo, stretching out nicely.



Current vine length of the 427 is 5.5 foot, with 13 inches of growth in the last three days, its first secondary vine can also be seen on the left of the photo.



The 1271 is cuurently a little behind the other two at only 4ft long vine length, no secondaries as yet but a growth in the last three days of 15 inches. I have noticed a difference in the vine on this plant, it's twice as think as the other two plant vines but is kind of flat, I suppose a cross section of the vine (No! I'm not going to cut it to look properly!) would show it to be figure of eigth, it is almost as if it has two main vines fused together, I hope the photo below shows that well



Steve...

 

Blimey it is thick Steve,does that mean that plant is the makings of a whopper?me being a total novice have never seen anything like it...

Just been and wrapped mine up again the forecast reckons a possible low of 6 degrees tonight..

 

Looking good Steve

 

Is that the miniature housebrick you got on ebay John?

 

have to get a picture of mine, they are all in a huge pot about to spill over to heavens knows. These are not planned but simply made it through the heavy snows and sprouted out of the old rotten mother pumpkins.

 

Possibly fasciation Steve

 

Mine don't seem to doing anything yet
See how they are in a couple of week when the roots get a grip pf the manure