June 10, only 3 plants left. Germination of the 815 failed. All three other plants are starting to vine. The 723 & 846 are slightly ahead and have their houses removed. A few of the leaves look poorly. The third plant looks very good even though it is a bit slower. It will be a few more days until it is ready to have its house removed.
June 12, there was a big thunderstorm last night and all 3 plants survived undamaged. In fact they look better this morning than they did yesterday! Bring on the thunderstorms. 723 & 846 vines grew more than 8" overnight. The third plant may be ready sooner than I thought to have its house removed. Maybe I'll have time to set the camera up this week.
June 14, The Pumpkin Cam Returns. My family is not too happy about the return of what we call "pumpkin tv". Not only does the pumpkin cam work so I can watch the patch on the net but I also have the video and sound connected to one of the inputs on the big tv so I can watch from inside. All 3 plants are out and running.
September 8, OK, so what happened to June, July and August? Well it's sort of like fishing where you can fish or cut bait. With pumpkins, you can grow them or compose web pages and fantasize about what could have been and why it isn't. The 723Bobier failed to set any fruit and the plant is sick and stunted. I don't blame the seed but its care must have overlooked something. Its neighbor the 846Calai has exactly the same care but it is everything a giant pumpkin grower could want. The plant is aggressive and tolerates the heat well. It suffered a minor disaster in August when someone was pruning ternaries and mindlessly cut off the tip of the main vine. That doesn't seem to have slowed it at all as it continues to put on pounds even with cool weather. I have kept it covered with 2 blankets since the night temperatures now sometimes fall into the 40's. This doesn't make for interesting pumpkin cam pictures so I only turn it on occasionally. All except 2 of the secondaries were terminated in August and I culled the other 2 fruit. I continue to let the bees have fun with the females as they appear but I remove the fruit when they get to soccer ball size. The other patch with one of my own seeds is a fun place. No great expectations there but also no worries about spoiling a big one. It has 3 fruit with the best one just over 400 pounds at this time.
September 26, I've decided to skip Topsfield and take my pumpkin to the local weigh off. The Durham Fair in Durham Connecticut is the largest agricultural fair in the state. This year the competition was very tough as usual. The last entry to arrive was an unknown grower with a large pumpkin that pushed the 667 pound Alan Reynolds pumpkin into third place. My pumpkin maintained a 3 pound advantage at 707 pounds to set a new record for the Durham Fair. The average weight of the top ten pumpkins was 576.6 pounds. Below is a picture of my 707Toftness01 being readied for a forklift ride to a scale at Airborne Express before continuing on to the weigh off in Durham. Next year I'll see what this 846Calai99 x 723Bobier99 cross can produce.
