Wednesday, August 22, 2012

The Pumpkin Plant is Maturing Way too Fast

I saw a report on 9News from yesterday that said the pumpkin farmers pumpkins were turning orange two weeks ahead of schedule.  The heat of the summer has taken it's toll.  I'm seeing that on my own pumpkin plant.  90% of the oldest leaves have died off this last week.  Around the stump there is basically no leaves at all now.  I haven't done a lot of measurements lately but the last measurement showed the pumpkin slowing way down.  The cool nights are now slowing the pumpkin down.  Officially we hit 90 degrees in Denver today but I don't thing it was above 80 degrees for more than 4 hours today and it didn't hold above 90 very long at all.  I've noticed that some trees are starting to show the very beginning signs of turning colors.  I don't see this pumpkin putting on the pounds I was hoping for in September.

This evening I sprayed some foliar magnesium on the plant.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Same here Jamie. Leaves dying off like its mid September. Pumpkin growth way down.

Weird.
Erik

Jamie said...

That cool spell that we had dropped the pumpkin down to about a 9 pounds a day average for three days. It came back a bit with the warmer weather. Previously I was hoping to get some descent gains in September. Now I'm just hoping the pumpkin doesn't stop before the weigh-off.

Patrick said...

Ditto here. Within the past 2 days my patch died off immensely, and about half of my pumpkins are deep orange already.