Herb This » Pumpkins

Happy Halloween!! And Garden Humor October

Sheryl — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:00:45 +0000

Happy Halloween!! I bet you thought I was going to forget about this because I’ve been so terrible at posting. I cannot believe how quickly this fall has gone… before you know it, it will be Thanksgiving and then CHRISTMAS!!!!

Q: What is a pumpkin’s favorite sport?

WOOT WOOT!! We still had a pumpkin at the garden!

A: Squash!

Hahaha… and of course, so appropriate, because look what else popped up again… one of the ones from last year must have escaped and the seeds crept into the ground. We harvested two along the ground and will be cooking them for dinner soon.

ACORN SQUASH!

It’s ALIVE!

Sheryl — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:00:01 +0000

The second pumpkin plant (the vine that traveled up the fence)is actually still going, and the pumpkin is still in OK condition. Hopefully we can get to it in the next day or so before critters start to eat it, and it might actually make it to Halloween!

Pumpkin fail

Sheryl — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 10:00:32 +0000

As I wrote a few posts ago about the cucumber plants dying, I realized the EXACT same thing happened to our pumpkin, only we originally thought we stepped on it by accident or something. It was growing really well, then, all of a sudden… DEAD! The vines shriveled up leaving two orphan pumpkins to turn orange and waste away in the sun. Squash, pumpkin and cucumber leaves are all very similar, so they are probably susceptible to the same types of fungus. We didn’t get to the pumpkins in time before the critters got to them, but I did get to harvest the seeds.

Before shot… seemingly healthy pumpkin

After shot… dried pumpkin seeds

I guess we’ll try again next year!

Baby Pumpkin!

Sheryl — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:30:50 +0000

Last year (our first year on the plot we have now in the community garden), we got a surprise pumpkin that grew along the fence. We knew SOMETHING was growing, but we didn’t know what. It grew up the fence, and we got an elongated pumpkin out of it! We dried and vacuum packed some seeds from it, and also dried and vacuum packed some seeds from a small (normal, round) pumpkin we picked up from our local farmers market.

We decided to try growing both of them this year from the seeds, as you can see in the top right corner of the Garden Map. I planted and labeled each one in its own terracotta pot earlier this season, but failed to realize that the marker I used would fade in the sun. Now, both plants look exactly the same, and right now, we can’t tell them apart.

Today, we noticed one of them already has a baby pumpkin on it! Look how cute!

Of course, we don’t know which pumpkin it is! We are not sure if the elongated pumpkin was a different type of pumpkin or if it a ‘normal’ pumpkin and just grew that way because we let the vines climb the fence. I am hoping we will get to find out soon enough! (For the record, this year they should have enough room where they should not need to climb a fence)