OK, Diamondlady, I will admit you have me hooked on hearing about your pumpkins. How are they doing? Do you start from seeds or do you buy seedlings? I just planted some things in my garden over the long weekend, and I think we have similar climates (I'm zone 5), so I'm curious to find out what's growing for you. I always plant flowers for a cutting garden that I start from seeds indoors, and with the economy this year I have also planted some veggies. I'm going to plant pumpkins this weekend as well, but mine are just for the kids' annual fall party for guests to carve.

Do tell...

Laura, I was on vacation all week planting gardens and flower beds, busy busy. So, here is the latest update. I started out with 6 plants, 2 in each hoop house that we built this Spring, THANK GOD for those hoop houses, they have saved my plants more times than I care to count. I had them all lit up like camp out back this May because it was so cold out there at night and we had to keep the little guys warm. They are now nicknamed my "kids". I have to close them up at night to keep them warm and give them a drink of "special" water. Right now it's a mix of liquid seaweed and fish emulsion and a bunch of water, LOL. They are doing very well. I made the cuts down to three plants this week as I have only 2400 sq ft of a patch and they recommend 1,000 sq ft per plant, you see the problem, LOL!

I have a diary on bigpumpkins.com website, and I'll provide the link here for folks to follow throughout the season.

This year in the new portion of the patch, I have a nice crop of potatoes that came in, FINALLY (first time ever growing potatoes), and I'm growing corn this year as well.

In the garden, is tomatoes, peppers, radishes, carrots, yellow and green beans and peas (for the first time). I've grown peas before but never in my own garden, always with my dad's help. This year, I had to put cages over top of the seeds in the garden to keep the baby bunnies out of my garden. They had a midnight snack one night and cleaned half of my peas, LOL. Someone was hungry, can't say I blame them.

To answer your question regarding planting the pumpkins, yes I start them from seed around April 25 and put in the dirt by May 8th this year. It would have been earlier but with this cold snap, it's slowed things down quite a bit. I've gotten to know some really great growers, who for the price of a self addressed stamped bubble will send you a package of seeds in the mail. Or, in the Winter months they have auctions for the highly sought after seeds, which is alot of fun to watch. One 998 Pukos seed went for over 500 bucks at auction, one seed with no guarantee for germination. But, all fundings go to the individual grower club, and our own NYSGPGA had their auction as well, and I am now a member and I do the newsletter for the group. It's been a blast learning and still learning thru this, my third season of growing giants. All good fun.


http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2008&grower=36421&action=L

ENJOY!
Chris


Diamondlady
Peer Moderator

Edited by diamondlady on 02/06/08 01:21 AM.

Sounds great--what fun! I planted corn, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce and will be doing the pumpkins this weekend. For flowers: sunflowers (which I've never had good luck with but am hopeful this year), cosmos, zinnia, queen anne's lace, great quaking grass, baby's breath, scabiosa, and love-lies-bleeding. These are just for cutting for bouquets, I also have perennial gardens but at this point they really do for themselves, I just weed and mulch. I'm so happy that it's growing season!

So far we've just planted a row of tomatoes and 3 rows of okra (why?, I don't have a clue - my hubby was in the planting mood). My father in law usually plants watermelons and I'm sure he'll have those going soon. DD usually has a big garden with corn, green beans and purple hull peas, so I usually don't plant those, but get some from her.

I'm not much of a gardner, I'm lucky to have gotten the plants on my porch repotted (petunias and periwinkles).


Marie

I'm not much of a gardener either. I put some petunias and snapdragons in the flower beds and that's about it. It's all we can do to keep up with the mowing and trimming, let alone anything else!

We're getting a heat wave this week coming up. Today is the first day we've seen temps in the 90's F. It's got potential for record breaking heat today with a high of 93 for this time of year to get in the 90 degree mark is really unusual, especially since we had an unseasonably cold May. I'll take the heat though, I can finally get in the pool this weekend! Woo Hoo!

Pumpkins are at the mercy of the elements today, and from what I am seeing today in the winds, I'm glad I left the plastic behind the pumpkin plants today to keep a small wind break. This is their first day outside of the hoop houses as the temps soar into the 90's. If I left the hoops over them it would have cooked the plants at 140 degree temps inside. Too much heat! I'm hoping I watered enough this morning to get them thru until I get home to water again. I'm hoping with any luck when my hubby gets home he'll go up and check and water them if necessary. He's been known to help out if he sees they need it.

I'm just worried about critters, I can't protect the plants forever, but, I'm not home to patrol the patch. I did shag out a squirrel out of the back yard this morning before I left. Not that he would have done much damage, but, you never know. LOL!

My beans finally came up, the ones I planted last week while on vacation, woo hoo! The corn I planted last week is also up. Watered my potatoes, and the rest of the veggie garden this morning and flowers too. I hope it's enough til I get home so I can water again.

I am hoping these warm temperatures will help my plants sit down in the dirt so they will start to vine out. They have been growing upward instead of vining like they should. It's kinda hard to get a plant to lay down on cold dirt when they like it above 60. LOL! Talk about fussy plants. They are atlantic giants, not anything like a normal plant, a challenge and loads of fun!

Diamondlady
Peer Moderator

Edited by diamondlady on 06/06/08 06:05 PM.

Just a word of advice, if you want to keep the critters out of your garden go buy mothballs. They must be moth balls not moth flakes. I know for a fact rabbits and squirrels hate the smell of moth balls. Put the moth balls around the whole perimeter of your garden. Make sure there is no breaks in the the line of the moth balls. For some reason the critters here in Delaware are not smart enough to try and jump the line of moth balls to get to the juicy plants. This even work's for flower plants and bulbs.

You have to keep refreshing the moth balls as they will lose their order after they have been outside for a while. But they do work. I purchase mine from the Dollar store and it doesn't get too expensive.

Good luck.

Ddiva

Although they may work, I wouldn't use mothballs anywhere near my edible garden. They are toxic chemicals that can damage the soil and are poisonous to cats, dogs and children.

Marie

They may work around a giant pumpkin to keep critters from chewing holes in a 1000 pound unedible fruit.

Diamondlady
Peer Moderator

Mothballs work amazingly on skunks....we had one living under our house and the mothballs got rid of him right away. Should lend an interesting perfume to your garden air :)