Comparison to Last Year's Pumpkin Plants

Pumpkin plants seem to be relatively happy this year. The picture below is a comparision of this years 1161 Rodonis (top plant) compared to the 1350 Starr from last year (bottom plant) at the same number of growing days. We are off to a fairly good start.

Plants Survived the Storm & Growing Well

Checked on the plants this morning and they all seemed happy. Hoop house was a nice 89 degrees at 10:00 this morning. The secret formula seemed to have some effect on the plants so it will be interesting to see how the plants do under better weather conditions.

All of the plants are vining now. The picture to the right is the kids' 1129 Orleck. It is a beautiful plant, with nice green color, a good start for the vine and good size. The kids are going to shatter their personal best this year for sure.

Secret Formula for Record Breaking Giant Pumpkins

I'm trying something new this year to grow bigger pumpkins. Before I've talked about that there are no real secrets in growing giant pumpkins. Most of the best ideas out there are known by most of the growers. The best growers in the world don't have a secret sauce that grows giants, they mostly have 5-10 little things that they do better or slighly differently than most other growers to add 10 pounds here and twenty pounds there to a pumpkin in the course of a season.

The thing I'm trying isn't exactly new. I've seen youtube videos were people were doing something similar for other applications, but I haven't seen it done this way with giant pumpkins before. I did one test this Spring on a plant that I'm not going to grow and it didn't kill the plant so I think nothing but good should come of it. If I don't literally blow up the pumpkin plant then I expect nothing but good. To the right is a picture of the secret project to give you a little hint with the secret blacked out. On May 24th I'll give the whole story with results.

Any guesses on what this is?

Pumpkin Plant Update & Colorado Growing

The pumpkin plants are doing well even though our Colorado weather is not so great. The picture to the right was taken this morning. More snow in the forecast for tonight and then we should be back into the 60s again. I have a thermostatically controlled space heater in one hoop house and I have 150 watts of light bulbs in the other hoop house so the plants should be fine.

So far the 1161 Rodonis is my best plant. The 1528 Starr slowed down about a week before planting it outside and it has never recovered. The 1316 Harp and 1236 Harp are about the same but in different ways. The 1316 Harp doesn't seem to like the heat at all and gets droopy leaves when it gets hot. It also looks like it is going to double vine. The 1236 Harp is about the same size as the 1316 but has lighter color. I'm guessing that in the next 1.5 weeks I'll be to the point that I'm going to have to decide which plant to keep.

The best looking plant so far of all of the plants isn't my plant. The kids 1129 Orleck is the best plant to this point. Nice green leaves, good vigor and maybe the biggest in size of all of the plants. The kids are going to grow big and heavy this year. I'm second guessing if I should have kept the Orleck for myself. It will be a good pollinator.

I Hate Wind

To the wind a pumpkin plant looks just like a kite. It catches the big Atlantic Giant pumpkin leaves, lifts the vine off the ground and then twirls it in the air until it snaps the vine. Today we are having some nice 40-70mph gusts of wind. Some of the gusts have been strong enough to move the hoop houses 8 inches even with large boulders anchoring it down. And the wind tore the staples out of the plastic on one side of one hoop house. To make things worse it is a sunny day so the hoop houses are heating up fast and it is fine balance between opening the hoop houses up so the plants stay around 85 degrees and creating a wind tunnel that is wiping the pumpkin plants around. I hate wind.

The Pumpkins are in the Ground, Finally!

About a week late, but the pumpkins are finally in the ground. The roots didn't seem to be bound up from being in the pots so we should be okay. Now we just have to survive nights that are still hovering around freezing and making sure that the hoop houses get opened up early enough that the plants don't cook. This time of the pumpkin season isn't my favorite. For the next two weeks the plants tend do just sit there and plants are very tender so I tend to worry (but as Joe Schreber once said it, "that is what we do.").

I'm relatively happy with where the plants are at. Wish they were a touch bigger, but the color is really good (exept the 1528 is a little light in color) and they seem relatively happy.

In one hoop house I've put a space heater with a thermostat to keep the plants warm at night and in the other hoop house I've got two light bulbs and a 5 gallon jug of hot water to keep the plants warm.

The picture inside the hoop house is the 1528 Starr and the 1161 Rodonis. In the other hoop house is the 1316 Harp and the 1236 Harp. So far the 1316 Harp is the best looking plant of all of the plants. On Saturday the plan is to plant the 1129 Orleck and the 1048 Scherber.

I've put barb wire around the hoop houses to keep Biz from poking around and stealing all my secrets. lol

Hoop Houses in Place & Ready to Grow

I finally completed the construction of my hoop houses yesterday and put them into place just in time to beat the storm. 80 degrees yesterday and snowing this moring. Welcome to the Mile High City!

My last hoop houses were destroyed so I made new ones that were slightly larger. I'm getting very anxious to get my pumpkin plants into the ground but the weather here in Denver is going to be around freezing at night for the next few days so I'm holding off for now. I'm concerned about the plants roots getting bound so I will probably put them in the hoop houses on Saturday with some heat sources to get them going.

Pumpkin Plant Update

I'm getting very anxious to get my pumpkin plants in the ground. The plants have gotten large enough now that it is getting difficult to get them under the grow lights. This morning we woke up to snow on the ground in Denver and the large range forecast is for temperatures around freezing this coming weekend. I'm debating putting them in the ground on Wednesday. I can keep the plants warm enough that they should survive but I'm struggling with whether it would be better to keep them in their puts a few more days or get them going in the ground. I re potted the plants on Saturday but I don't think I can go much beyond this coming Saturday before I run the risk of getting the roots bound up.

Below are pictures of all of the plants except for the 1528 Starr. Click on the picture for a larger view. The first one is of all of the plants. It is interesting to see how similar the last two plants and the first two plants are. The first plant is the 1236 Harp. The second plant is the 1161 Rodonis. Although they are separated by three generations, genetically they are pretty much the same with 1068 and 998/1231 in them. Other than the 1236 has the crinkled leaves those two plants are almost identical in size and shape. The next two plants are the 1129 Orleck and the 1316 Harp. Both of these plants have 985 in them so I would guess that is where the larger leaves are coming from. The 1528 is equally doing well but the wind started to come up when I was taking these pictures so it didn't make it outside. All of my plants are ahead of my plants from last year at the same number of days but they are a touch behind where I think they should be. I'm not sure my grow lights have enough wattage and the weather outside has been cold, overcast and windy so they haven't gotten much direct sunlight yet. The color on all of the plants look good however so they aren't doing to bad. Leave a comment below to tell me which one's you think I should grow...

Pumpkin Plants at 4-6 Days Old

I started soaking my seeds last Monday and Wednesday and now the pumpkin plants are 4-6 days old since the germinating process began. To the right is a picture of all of the plants except for the 1019. 1316 and 1129 are the biggest so far, but the 1528 is on par with those two even though it is two days younger. 1161 is a bit small and the 1236 has those funny crinkled leaves. The weather here in Denver is beautiful so I decided to let them all do a little sunbathing today. Click the picture for a larger view.

Kids Excited to See Their Pumpkin Plant Pop Through the Soil

This morning the 1316, 1236 and 1129 plants popped through the soil. Four and a half days after they were sanded and soaked. Mid-day today the 1019 showed up. The 1161 and 1528 were started 1.5 days later so I suspect we will see them tomorrow afternoon.

Which One Will Grow the Big One?

Okay, seed germination is now done. I have a 1161 Rodonis, 1236 Harp, 1528 Starr, 1129 Orleck, 1019 Grande and 1316 Harp now germinated. The 1385 was the only seed that didn't pop. When I saw that the 1385 wasn't going to go I started an 1161 and 1528 on the 14th. I have three spots to grow on so I will put two plants into every spot and let the best plant win. These decisions are always tough because after just a few weeks of growing it is impossible to tell which one is going to grow a giant, so you have to rely on you research in the off season and your intuition and after that it is just pure luck (and I don't even believe in luck).

The Patch is Tilled and We Are Almost Ready to Roll

I tilled my amendments into the pumpkin patch today. Add 17 pounds of gypsum, 35 pounds of alfalfa meal, 2 pounds of magnesium sulfate, 20 pounds of PAM, winter rye grass, two bags of peralite, 1 bag of vermiculite, 2 pounds of epsom salts and about 3 1/2 yards of very old composted cow manure. I really like the tilth of the soil and where things have come from 1.5 years ago when I started the patch. For some reason my potassium shot up in my last soil test but for the most part, after the amendments I have added, we should be in good shape this season.

Next steps will be to finish off the new hoop houses I started two weeks ago, add the hail netting structure and put in two new sprinkler heads.

755 Johnson Pumpkin Seed. Big Orange Genetics!

The seed I grew my rookie season came from Howard Dill, the grower and former world record holder that developed the genetic lines that most growers grow today. The seed came from a non-descript "300-500 pound pumpkin" bin. My thinking at the time was that any pumpkin over the 141 pounder I had grown the year before would be better than seeds I could get locally and I wasn't sure how I would move a pumpkin over 500 pounds. Later I wished I had gone for a little "better" seed.

Today I found out the genetic background of the 755 Johnson seed. I met Danny Dill, Howard's son, when I was in Niagara and he told me he would be able to track down it's parentage. The pumpkin itself didn't have an offical weight so it is simply a 500+ Dill, but the cross in that seed was:

589 Dill '05 x 730 Dill '06

The 589 is 670 Daigle x 846 Calai

The 730 is 1016 Daletas x 810 Dill

Every grandparent in the 755 Johnson has the prettiest orange pumpkins that you could find. It is only missing the 500 Northrup and in my book it would have all of the best orange genetics available in Atlantic Giants. The 755 Johnson took second place for the Howard Dill Award in 2008.

We have Pumpkin Plants!

Twenty-two hours after soaking the seeds the first pumpkin plant emerged from the 1316 Harp seed last night. This morning the 1236 Harp and 1129 Orleck have also popped.

The Pumpkin Season has Officially Begun!

My wife would tell you that the giant pumpkin season is a year around hobby for me (and that would be true) but we are now offically off and running. At the Rocky Mountain Giant Vegetable Growers Spring Meeting on Saturday Joe Scherber announced he had already started his seeds and I know that got more than one grower thinking about their start date.

Last year I planned on starting on the 15th but illness made me wait until the 18th. With the weigh-off last year on September 26th I decided that anything after the 15th was to late to get started. I'd rather let my vines run a little longer with an early start date. This year the weigh-off is on the 25th so I decided to sand and soak my seeds tonight. Right now my seeds are wrapped in a lightly damp paper towel in a 87 degree closet. Hopefully a little root will be popping out of the seeds in the next 24 hours.

This year I'm doing one thing different in my seed starting pots. I've added a little Azos (Azospirillum brasilense) to the pots. Azos is a nitrogen fixing bacteria that will literally take nitrogen from the air and give it to the plants in a usable form. This bacteria comes from the jungles of Brazil. In Niagara they talked about seed starting using Azos where they lightly dusted the seeds with Azos before they were put in the pot and they showed pictures of the trial and and the control plants. The Azos plants in the pictures were literally twice as big as the other plants. I planned on doing some seed starting the same way they did in the trials until I heard the results of the Wiz's trial plantings. What he found was that the Azos plants were much more vigourous growers but he also found that they grew to fast in most of the plants riped off a cot leaf when it was coming out of the seed. Now the Wiz admits that he might have put on to much Azos on the seed and the seeds weren't sanded, but that scared we away a little so I put my Azos in the potting soil rather than on the seed to avoid those kinds of problems.

The next seven days is always a little anxious for a giant pumpkin grower. You spend a fair amount of time deciding which seeds to grow and thinking about the possible crosses you could do with those seeds, but you never know if the seeds will germinate. Last year I tried starting a 1450 Wallace but didn't have any luck with it (a common problem with the 1450). This year I started a couple of backup plants just in case something doesn't work out with the pumpkin plants that I plan on growing. I'll actually put my backup plants in the ground a couple of feet away from my "main" plants and if they are outperforming the main plants I'll rip the main plants out of the ground.

Here is to hoping in 2010! Hope is why we do this crazy pumpkin thing we do.

Pumpkin Patch Prep in Colorado

Taking the good advice of an excellent grower I added 3 1/2 yards of composted cow manure to the patch today. My potassium is high in the patch (we are either going to grow a big one this year or we are going pop them all) so I debated weather to add the compost but the advantages of adding the compost outweigh the disadvantages so I evenly distributed it around the 900 sq foot patch. In the next week or so I will add som gypsum, calcium nitrate, peralite, vermiculite, PAM and corn meal to the patch and roto till the area where the hoop house will be and then a few weeks after that I will rototill the rest of the patch so the rye grass has a little more time to grow. The corn meal is being added to add trichoderma to the patch.

Optimist Club and Giant Pumpkins

Spoke to the local Arvada Optimist club this week on how to grow giant pumpkins. I wasn't sure going into it how many of them would be interested in the topic, but nobody fell asleep and they all seemed very interested. I asked who wanted seeds and almost everyone asked for one so I figured they must have been into it.

2010 Seed Lineup

I believe I have finalized my 2010 seed lineup. Very grateful to the kind growers who gave me the seeds! Especially grateful to Eddy for the 1385 Jutras. I'm sure I got way more from him then I gave to him. Lots of generous growers out there.
The finalists are: 1385 Jutras, 1236 Harp, 1128 Orleck, 1316 Harp, 1528 Starr and 1019 Grande. Hoping that one of these will get me over 1,000 pounds and beyond.

Niagara Giant Pumpkin Seminar

This last weekend I went to the pumpkin seminar in Niagara. The three day event was a lot of fun and very informative. After arriving in Buffalo the Biz, Wiz and myself went to the Anchor bar with Schweigert to get some of their world famous wings. The Anchor bar is famous for being the inventor of buffalo wings. At the Anchor bar we met up with Ron Wallace, former world record holder and a really nice guy. I had many highlights on this trip but being able to sit down and ask Ron a whole list of questions was a real highlight and he was gracious enough to thoughtfully answer everything asked by everyone.

Off all of the seminars at the conference the most interesting for me was John Tabernas on soil. I've spoke with John last year after Thad Starr had hooked me up with him and it was a real pleasure. Talking with John about soils is like drinking from a fire hydrant. 70% of the time he is over my head, but what John has been doing this last year with his lab is soil and tissue sampling on Atlantic Giant pumpkins with top growers to determine what these pumpkins really need. Some of the things he said really turned the heads of a lot of heavy hitters. Like suggesting that we are over watering the pumpkins late in the season. I video taped this section of the conference and I'm going to need to watch it a lot of times before I can start to fully grasp the ramifications of his suggestions.

Another highlight from the trip is the little prank pulled on the Biz. Eddy and the Wiz had hatched a little plan over the last couple of months that I was a part of but didn't know all of the details until it had happened. Eddy was talking at the table and said he wanted Jim's 1019 Grande seed. Jim said he didn't bring any seeds so I pulled out of my pocket the 1019 that the Wiz had given me for the joke and I said, "Well I've got one for you Eddy." Eddy then handed me a 1385 Jutras that he had promised me but the exchange looked like a trade. Gary then said, "I've got a 1019 for you too" and handed Eddy the packet. Eddy then handed back a packet that I only got a glimpse of but it looked an awful lot like a 1068 Wallace packet. Once it was in the Wiz's hand I looked closer and it was a 1068 Wallace packet and the envelope was sealed. I'm not going to say what was inside that packet but there will be some good genetics in Colorado in 2010.

At the conference the top growers from last year were honored. Of that group I got some time with Don Young who grew two 1,600+ pound pumpkins this last year. He was a really great guy and more than willing to talk and share ideas. It was fun watching the segment of him on Conan Obrien this last fall with him.

Patch prep time is just around the corner now and the warm Denver, Colorado weather of the last few days is getting all the locals hungry to start planting. I started with some minor patch prep yesterday.

It must almost be pumpkin season

The warm weather has brought out the pumpkin growers in full force. Had a nice visit with Joe "the master" Scherber. He made a 1068 Wallace mold and made a gold key ring. Very cool. If the dental thing doesn't pan out for Joe he can always do jewlery.

Also had a nice visit with the Menzines of Arvada this week. They are looking to grow big and I can tell they have the will to do it.

I have been thinking about my planned crosses and the more I think about it the more I like the 1236 Harp x 1385 Jutras cross. If you follow the gentic lines you will see that there is a world record pollinator on each side of the cross. You then go back one more generation on both sides and you see another world record pollinator. You can even go back one more generation on the 1236 side and there is another world record pollinator. Hopefully that all translates to a new Colorado state record seed next year.