| June 2007 |
| June 3rd, I was able to measure plants this morning. I also culled down to my final selections. These lengths of vines are tied with my 2001 year which was a great year for me. But.... the plants were started a week earlier. Still hoping to get pollinations in late June out about the 14' mark instead of the 10' mark which I usually do. Will try to post pictures at some point but after a while pictures of plants are boring 500 Northrup 75" that counts the new secondary this is being trained to replace the broken main vine 1101 Northrup 70" 857 Christensen (my wifes plant) 68" 857 Christensen (my plant) 60" 670 Daigle 58" 869.5 Calai 50" Both my son's squash are at 50" June 6th The weather has turned nasty today. High of 50 degrees and that was at 2 am. It's been in the low 40's all day with rain. Below and on the left is my wife's 857 and on the right is my 1101. As you can see they are doing very well. Beginning to bury the vines. The 1101 is showing this female. It should open in 8-10 days. It will be too early and too close to the stump to pollinate. The 500 had a male open today. A guy was coming to till the rest of the patch today but he never showed. I suspect the rain scared him away for a day or two. .38" of rain so far (which is lot for around here). |
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| June 8th, Plants survived the cold just fine. The 500 is touching the sides. I either have to lift the side of the greenhouse up and let it grow under, cut the plastic or remove it all together. The forecast is for another cold snap this next week so I'm debating on what to do. Karie's 857 is growing out the door so she has the same problem. I have had male flowers open on the 500, 1101 and 857. June 9th New measurements 500 10' 857 Karie's 9' 1101 9' 262 (blake's) 8'9" 857 8'2" 1131 (Blake's) 8' 670 7'7" 869.5 7'6" Just looked back at last years diary. On the 8th my best plant was the 1101 with a vine that was about 5'. It hit the 8' mark on June 16th. I've maintained or increased my one week early start. Hope it continues to hold. My biggest two pumpkins last year were pollinated on 7/2 at the 12' and 11' mark. I would like to pollinate 4-5 days earlier and 3-4 feet further out. June 13th, Took down the last of the greenhouses today. This is the earliest they have ever come down. I'm a little superstitious, it's a good way to get a frost but so far so good. The man who tilled my garden came tonight. The patch looks awesome. I will try to post pictures soon as it won't look so nice for at least another year. The plants are all doing great. I think females are showing on every one. Typically take about 8-10 days from when a female shows up before it opens. So none of these that are showing yet will be pollinated. I had a gentleman from Califonia call and leave me a message about yellow vines. Sorry I didn't get your call returned and then I lost your number. Yellow vines are okay on Atlantic Giants. If the leaves are yellow that is more of a concern. I will also try to get some pictures posted of my yellow vines as well. June 16th, Here are a couple of pics of the patch. The lower left has Karie's 857 in the front, the 670 is in the middle and hiding in the back is the 1101. The lower right is Blake's 1131 in the front, the 857 in the middle and the 500 in the back ground. All of the plants are at least 10'. I will have three females open in the morning. None of them will get pollinated as it is too early. (pictures actually taken early yesterday) |
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| Here are the vines on my 869.5 Calai. Probably the most yellow of the vines in the patch but this is normal, not something to be worried about. |
| Put the sprinklers out yesterday and turned them on. It was supposed to get real hot and I didn't want to lose any vines. Returned home today to find all is well. |
| June 18th Growing pumpkins in Idaho SUCKS!! Forecast last night was for 43 degrees. That was off by over 11 degrees. Both of my son's plants look like complete losses. It's a little early to tell for sure but they look bad. I had damage to 5 of the other 7 plants. It's still too early to tell how much. I told you that taking the greenhouses down was a good way to bring on the frost. After checking this evening I am even more discouraged then I was this morning. The casuality list is a follows the 262 Christensen and 1131 Timm (both my son's plants) are a 90% loss. There are two unaffected leaves on each plant. Most of the tips of the vines are dead including the main vines. They might recover enough to give him a 100 pound squash by the end of the season, but we are both favoring tilling em under and hoping for better weather next year. Both 857's, 500 northrup and 869 Calai are 40-60% loss. Many of the tips have been killed including main vines on three of these. Not completly dead but will be unable to grow a competitive fruit. The only two bright spots in the patch are the 670 Daigle and 1101 Northrup. These only suffered 5-10% damage. Most of the tips of the secondaries including the main vine and back main vines are alive so they should do okay. Yesterday things looked as good as they ever have and today I wonder why I do this. |
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| These are my son's plants yesterday afternoon. fortunatly for all the weeds there still looks to be a fair amount of green in this picture. |
| June 28th, Sorry for the lack of updates. The frost took a little wind out of my sails. But I still have two plants that are doing great. Here is a rundown. I had a very lot frost again this monday morning. I lost one leaf on the 500 and my son had alittle more damage to the 262. Tough year for frosts. My thermometer on Monday morning said 34.6 and by the afternoon was 83.1 thats a 48.5 degree temp. spread that is not the kind of weather that makes for big pumpkins. Someday I will get a greenhouse. 1131 Timm - showing very little life after the frost. 262 Christensen - showing very little life after the frost. 869 Calai - probably lost- it has simply come to a stand still after the frost, many of secondaries were killed and the plant now resembles my 898 from a few years back. 857 Christensen (my plant) -I lost about 1/2 of the secondaries and the main vine. I have retrained a secondary to act as a main. No females showing on the new main as of yet. Nearly all of the east half of the plant lost its secondaries so it will take a while to develop enough new growth to support a fruit. I would like to grow this out to see what color of fruit it produces. 500 Northrup-lost a few of the secondaries but it severely slowed the growth of this plant. No females showing on the main vine 857 Christensen (my wife's plant)- lost many of the secondaries on the east side of it. The main vine is great as are the west side secondary vines. I had two flowers that would not open. I finally opened them by hand but I think they were a day or two late. Another flower should open in the morning. I will see if it suffers from the same problem as the last two. My wife has kind of quite taking care of this plant. I may have to step in and "help" her out. 670 Daigle - I lost only 1 secondary vine and this plant is doing fairly well I pollinated one flower last week but I feel it is too early. I pollinated another yesterday and it is at good distance (probably 13-14') and will likely be a keeper if it takes. 1101 Northrup - continues to be the star of the patch. I pollinated one flower last week but again feel it is too early. Pollinated another yesterday. Unfortunatly there was only one male flower from the entire patch to pollinate with. I hope it takes. I have not measured but my guess is that it is about 15-16' out from the stump. I've started to put baskets over the tender young fruit to protect them and have spread mouse bait/poisen around each to the young pumpkins. |