June 18
All four plants are just starting to vine. Cucumber beetles have been in town for several weeks BUT they still have not found my pumpkin patch. Some other type of pest is chewing on the Brooks 560-98 plant but not the others. A nice dose of sevin should put an end to them. The McIntyre 835-98 had a flat vine up until 2 or 3 days ago when it suddenly began to look like Medusa with 3 to 5 separate normal looking vines.
McIntyre 835-98
June 26
The weather has been hot and dry. Not the best conditions for growing giant pumpkins. The McIntyre plant wilts at 9:30 am and looks dead until about 4:00 pm when it gets a little shade. I measured the temperature of the first centimeter of soil, its 134 F while the air temperature is 93 F.
On the left is shown the McIntyre 835 at 9:300 am and on the right at 4:30 pm.
July 2
Well we finally had a little rain. Total rain for June was 0.48 inches. The first male flowers appeared two days ago. Below are the quick wilting McIntyre and the Mombert 780 before the 1.49 inches of rain. The next 4 days are expected to be warmer than 90 to 95 degrees.
July 10, 1999
Things are slow in the patch. Three of the plants are vinning well but don’t look much different than last week. The Brooks 560-98 seems stunted and proceeds very slowly. There is a good chance it will be culled as soon as there are sets on the Reynolds480 UOW. The female flowers are slower than I had expected but this one on the Reynolds will open soon. Two unopened male flowers can be seen in the right picture.
Once they open you can observe the difference between the female (left) and male (right) flowers. Note for Ted, these ‘spicy’ pictures were added at your request.
July 13
The female on the Reynolds plant finally opened and was pollinated (sorry Ted no pictures). I can’t hold the camera and work at the same time. Early in May a mature field pumpkin appeared at my door. It still had some green color. It sat there until it started to get soft. One of my boys called me at work today to say there was a 100+ pound AG pumpkin at the door. Talk about fast growing, I only pollinated this morning!
Alan Reynolds is enjoying poking fun at me with his cull because he is so far ahead. Sadly his big one on the same plant as the cull went down the next day. On July 22 we cut up the cull and buried it. The soil is so dry that it desiccated the pumpkin and the hole imploded the next day.
July 25
The weather has been rotten to say the least unless you’re growing cactus. Already this month there have been 19 days over 90 degrees, 8 over 95 and 5 over 100. All this with only 2.03 inches of rain and 1.49 of that was on 2 July. The pumpkin patches are out of control and in need of maintenance. I have pollinated several females but it looks like most have or will abort soon. The Mombert 780 has not produced any females yet and it is a much darker shade of green than the others. Several females on the McIntyre(shown below) have been pollinated but they may all abort. The Reynolds 480uow is being chewed by some bug but it may get the entire patch to itself soon because the Brooks560 is the slowest of all. On the right is the Reynolds that was pollinated on 13 July.
July 31
So much for the Reynolds shown above, it aborted. The entire plant looks like its finished. I am unable to keep up with 2 patches and the watering. All my efforts now will go to the other patch with the McIntyre and Mombert plants. After my page update on the 25th there was some rain (0.02") with hail. There was only very minor damage to the leaves from the hail. Two of the pumpkins pollinated on the McIntyre plant (July 20) look like they will survive. The Mombert plant has 1 set that is only a few days old but looks promising. I continue to pollinate everything. The bees are unusual in that I never see any honey bees but there are several ( 8 or 9) bumble or carpenter bees in each flower. They are very persistent and won’t get off the flowers even when I push them with a scissors. When I do get on off it falls to the ground and seems unable to get up and fly for some time. They act like they have overdosed on pollen.
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