The Blog Farm

Monday, May 3, 2010

The great pumpkin takeover

Okay, so maybe I was a little premature in starting our Dill's Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds....but who would have thought they would get so incredibly big so fast.....My dad decided it was time for the giants to move out of the greenhouse and into the ground so he built another cold frame and into the dirt they went. (Thanks to my husband and my brother for getting the plastic attached.) Our night time temps are going to be close to 30 F for the next week and we have had very windy conditions lately so I hope the hoops hold up....

We decided we might as well utilize the space around the pumpkins with the broccoli that was in the greenhouse. It needs to be hardened off anyway and we need more space in the greenhouse for more plants....and if you know me...there's always more plants... : )



The blossoms are beautiful!












Miss Stella snuck away when no one was looking and found a place to dig (as evidenced by the dirt on her nose)....she is so busted...naughty girl : )

17 comments:

  1. We received 8 seeds taken from a 480 lb pumpkin by some friends as a wedding gift. I am so bummed that only one of them germinated and even though it's been up for 2 weeks it hasn't developed any true leaves. My regular pumpkins though are going crazy.

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  2. Rachel, I also had several fail to germinate...hopefully your remaining pumpkin gets big : )

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  3. Pumpkins sure do grow fast, and will probably not be grown in my garden again. They require too much room, and are a magnet for squashbugs in my area.

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  4. I'd love to try growing pumpkins. But as the person above me said, they just need so much room...

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  5. EG, I don't like the amount of space they take up either...but it has become a family tradition to grow them and see how big they get...I can't mess with tradition lol : )

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  6. Kyna, I agree...we just need bigger gardens : )

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  7. Hope your pumpkin enclosure survived todays winds, one of our row covers went flying today...no harm done though. What a beautiful dog, our dogs a digger dog too, little monsters.:)

    I can't wait to watch your pumpkin grow.

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  8. But how can you punish such a sweet looking girl? What a cutie.

    Your pumpkins are HUGE!! I was going to start mine, now I'm glad that I waited. I do have cantaloupe started though because it always takes SO LONG to get it going.

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  9. Wow, they're looking great! I have to get my pumpkins started soon I guess...le sigh, this means hauling more dirt.

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  10. Mr. H, we had a slight row cover dilemma...the wind blew off one side of the hoop house...but not completely off...it was fixable but of course this happened during the 60 mph wind gusts and torrential down pour : ) ...such is the life of a gardener.

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  11. Sylvana, she is a sweet girl most of the time...she is our sneaky one though. : )

    We are hoping to get the pumpkins to at least 100 lbs this year so I thought I would start a little early (our growing season is short)...I guess we will see if that paid off or not.

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  12. Dietplaid, yes there is always work to do when it comes to gardening but it's great exercise : )

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  13. That is alot of broccoli plants! I don't know if I could get mad at Stella, such a sweet face :-)

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  14. Dan, it is and hopefully I can sell a lot of them at the market...if not we will be eating lots of broccoli lol....and yes Stella is a sweetie but we call her stubborn Stella for a reason : )

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  15. Hey Susan, I really like your hoop house. How did you attach the plastic to the frame? I've found that that's the most difficult thing about building hoop houses.

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  16. Thomas, we used a transparent duct tape. We used clear box tape on on the covers for the raised beds, but that weathered real fast and peeled off. So we went looking for something stronger, and we found transparent duct tape at Home Depot. So far it is doing a wonderful job...

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  17. Thomas, if you are talking about attaching the hoops to the base, Sue's dad drilled 1/2-inch holes through the 2x4s the PVC pipes slipped right in and were secured with screws

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