The great pumpkin

I have no final photo from the 2010 pumpkin patch, but that's ok because it got all overgrown and you couldn't see everything anyway.  The final tally of successful pumpkins was 13.  We lost a couple on the vines, but I'd say 13 is a respectable number.  We already gave a few away to family and still have plenty to carve up.  Some of the vines clearly did better then others, but again since it was so overgrown it was tough to tell which pumpkins were attached to which vines. 

I should have taken better care to see what was where, but I'll see what I can remember.... Weed Destroyer ended up with 1 pumpkin. Gourdy had 1 pumpkin that died on the vine. Bird Fertilizer did the best with at least 5 pumpkins (all were great sizes). Seven had 2 pumpkins.  Trooper had 1.  I think Bob had 1 and Pumpkinerina Uno had 2.  While it's not scientific proof that bird droppings help fertilize a plant, it does paint a picture.  I'll throw some pics of the jack-o-lanterns up after we carve them.

The vines are withering and dying....Oh NO!!!!!

It would appear that the pumpkins are all healthy and doing well, but as of today Weed Destroyer has withered and died. He lost a baby pumpkin :(
We count about 9 healthy pumpkins, but I'm afraid the one orange one that's visible will just rot on the vine.... it still has another month or so before the season is upon us (plus it looks all warped).

I'm not sure why the vines/leaves are all turning brown and dying. I'm giving them plenty of water.  Scouring the internet indicates there could be a fungus among_us.  I think I missed my window of opportunity to destroy the destroyer of my pumpkin plants, but I'll try a fungicide and report back.

Hang in there little pumpkin plants!

The way back time machine

I know, I know... I've been slacking off on the whole blog thing.  Other things have occupied my time, so I'll post when I can.  The pumpkin patch is seriously overgrown right now, so I thought I'd go back a little in time to previous pictures and talk about some things I never got around to.
First off.....the race. Which pumpkin plant had the most ambition this year?

Races are much more interesting when the racers have cool names....like horse racing. I believe it was The Simpsons that had a horse called "About to be Glue".  Naming things is always tough. You want it to be interesting, but not random.  My kids name their stuffed animals by stating something obvious, like its color, and adding a "y" to it.  For example, one bear is named "Browny".  I took the liberty of naming the pumpkin plants (and allowed my kids to pick a few) so our race would be more interesting. While I can't really have a running commentary, you can at least join in the festivities in celebrating the winner.

Names for the race

The origin of the names isn't that impressive, but I'll share anyway: I named Gourdy in honor of my kids. ie. state the obvious and add a "y". Weed destroyer and Bob were the kids choices. Pumpkinerina Uno is the first plant to yield a pumpkin and while I would have preferred Pizzeria Uno, there are no pizza plants in my garden. Trooper is the plant that I wrecked at the beginning of the season and it survived. Bird Fertilizer should be obvious as the bird house is right over it. And finally we have Seven. The reference is to the Seinfeld episode. I would have preferred "Mug", but it was the 7th plant I put in the ground.

The 1st image above clearly shows that "Bird Fertilizer" is the winner of the race to the fence. Congratulations and best of luck to our future racers.  While the race to the fence may be over, we can still have contests as to which plants yield the most pumpkins or the largest, etc and so on.

We've already had one casualty. Pumpkinerina Uno has lost one pumpkin already. For whatever reason it rotted on the vine and became mush. Rest in pieces mushy pumpkin.

The pumpkins are coming, the pumpkins are coming!!

The pumpkin patch has grown at a tremendous rate. There's no point in weeding much anymore because the big beautiful leaves block them from getting a lot of sun.... plus the viney-grabby things (I know they're called tendrils, but viney-grabby things sounded cooler) are using the weeds to wrap around. I like to imagine the pumpkin plants are strangling the weeds so they can't steal the water and nutrients they need.

We're up to 6 pumpkins that I could find.  The leaves are so large and cover so much area that it was challenging to discover all of them. One, although slightly lopsided, is already turning orange.

Future jack-o-lantern

While the pumpkin isn't growing as fast as my two images would indicate, it's still cruising along. The first posts from this blog show the leaves growing at a snails pace and was quite frankly pretty boring to write about...thus the "not-so-gardening" posts about birds and such.  In any case, these pictures were not taken in 2 consecutive days, but the growth is still faster than the leaves.  I'd love to be able to turn this pumpkin right-side up when it gets bigger so it doesn't get that ugly mottled look from lying on the ground, but in the past when I've tried this I ended up damaging the vine. So I'll leave it as it lies. I have also read that leaving the vine loose around the pumpkin will leave less stress on the vine reducing the chance of it splitting. I have no problem ripping up the weeds that the vine has chosen as it's grabbing points.

Baby pumpkin

Our first pumpkin showed up a few days ago. It's growing fast, but we're still a ways away for the chariot races. It ticks me off that the weeds will grow in any conditions, but my precious plants wither and die at the slightest hiccup.  I have weeds that are growing in between my bricks in my walkway. It's been 95-102 the last few days with no rain. The bricks feel like volcanic lava when walking across them, but that's still not hot enough to deter the pesky miserable little weeds.  I have ripped them up, stomped on them and sprayed them with weed killer.  Yet they still come back to annoy me.  However, I water the pumpkin plants and try to keep them healthy and a small wind snaps the thing in half (I exaggerate of course, but it's more fun that way.)

Sheesh, I take a week off from the blog and the plants all popped. You can see the two closest ones are starting to stretch their legs.  I like Lilysails idea of guessing which one will hit the fence first. The ones that are closest have the biggest advantage, but they're also the ones that got beheaded by my vigorous weed plowing.  Not sure about giving away pumpkins to the people that guess correctly. If everyone guesses right then we'll have no jack-o-lanterns for the kids this year. And if nobody guesses correctly then I'll feel like the Scrooge of Halloween. I'll need to come up with a cool "Ebenezer Scrooge" name that's appropriate for Halloween.  I'm expecting some good suggestions from you folk. I'll get the ball rolling..... How about Gourdon Miserly? Or Pepo Deprivative?

Next tune in when we'll discuss Al's gourd-mobiles for the pumpkin chariot races!!