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.)