(Pix are arranged in reverse chronological order here...)
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The carved A-1 pumpkin! 285 lbs. est. Roll the mouse over the image to see it lit! |
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The carved W-1 squash! 411 lbs., officially weighed. Roll the mouse over the image to see it lit! |
| Sometimes you have to send in your top help to get the cleaning job done right! |  |
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The S-2 pumpkin wouldn't stand up due to a rounded blossom end. I didn't know what to do with it. My wife thought it looked like a mouse- great idea!! Roll the mouse over the mouse to see it lit! |
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< There was some REALLY thick skin to cut through (11+")!! Between the 2 giants, over 1,000 nice seeds were saved to share. > |
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W-1 getting a ride from the fork lift on the way to the scale. I didn't realize I needed a wood pallet, and borrowed this one from some nice guys that came all the way up from Maryland. |
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The W-1 fruit on the scale weighing in at an official 411
pounds- it took first place in the squash (green fruit)
category, squeaking by the 2nd place finisher by a mere 6
pounds!! It weighed an amazing 21% over the OTT estimation
chart's prediction! This is a personal best for me, and
I'm ecstatic that it weighed over 400 lbs.!
My parents surprised me and came from out of town to see us at the weighoff, and my Dad brought me luck by wearing a shirt with the 10/5 van image on it!
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Here's a VERY happy crew! |
Took the final fruit measurements yesterday. The fruit stopped growing last
week. The final estimates are:
W-1 339 lbs.
A-1 285 lbs.
S-2 147 lbs.
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Here's how they're all positioned in the patch. Note most of the
plant leaves are long dead and gone.
--> See the growth graph for all 3 fruit way at the bottom of this page! |
| Things go much easier if you have a pumpkin lifting tarp with plenty of places for helpers to grab on. Here I am with my newly re-designed SuperLift Mark II pumpkin lifting tarp. |
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I had help from Dave, Fred, and Steve from work, and we lifted the 2 biggest out of the garden. We put the orange A-1 fruit out in front of the house. The bigger W-1 we put in the back of the minivan. |
| I brought the biggest back to work to show other interested friends. I borrowed a digital camera, and here's a photo of me in the parking lot! The yellow SuperLift Mark II lifting tarp that I made can be seen under the fruit; it performed flawlessly, easily hefting the load! 339 lbs., estimated via OTT measurement. |
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W-1 now 332 lbs. estimated, gaining about 4.3 lbs/day this past week; things picked up again with our recent warm weather (up to 80 degrees). The pumpkin skin got noticeably warmer to the touch during these few nice days. Circumference= 9 feet.
A-1 now 282 lbs. estimated, gaining about 3.8 lbs/day this past week. Circ.=8.8 feet
S-2 still 147 lbs. estimated, gaining zero this past week. Circ.=6.7 feet
The garden is really beat now; between old/mildew/dead leaves and last nights wind, there's few leaves standing, but the plants are still quite alive, as evidenced by the fruit growth. New vine growth is virtually nonexistent.
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W-1 at 57 days, 332 lbs. est. Note 3 color yardstick just behind ball. Orange coloration in photo is light reflecting off the ball; fruit is all green, but not as dark as it appears in this scan (I didn't have the digital camera for these pix). |
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A-1 at 65 days, 282 lbs. |
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S-2 at 62 days, 147 lbs. The S-2 fruit has stopped growing. Stem stress has cracked the stem fully half way off the vine now. |
See the growth graph for all 3 fruit way at the bottom of this page!
W-1 now 306 lbs. estimated, gaining only about 2.2 lbs/day this past week. I'm VERY happy to have one over 300 pounds!! Circumference= 8.7 feet.
A-1 now 259 lbs. estimated, gaining only about 1.2 lbs/day this past week. Circ.=8.6 feet
S-2 now 147 lbs. estimated, still gaining about 1 lb/day this past week. Circ.=6.7 feet
A-1 and S-2 are starting to very lightly canteloupe (light spider-web like cracking on the skin that heals over). A-1 is starting to blush orange. S-2 showing just a hint of green- on top near the stem down in the bottom of the rib valleys, but is still generally cream colored. W-1 is still an amazing green sphere, with side-to-side and top-to-bottom measurements within 1 inch of each other. Last Saturday I cut out over 60 dead leaves from the 3 plants combined. Age and mildew got to them. Note the growth rate per day has slowed way down. The fruit range in age from 51 to 59 days old.
W-1 now 265 lbs. estimated, gaining about 7.8 lbs/day this past week
A-1 now 247 lbs. estimated, gaining about 4.6 lbs/day this past week
S-2 now 130 lbs. estimated, gaining about 1 lb/day this past week. S-2's stem is doing nicely now that I've put Captan fungicide on it.
Mildew on the leaves of all the plants is starting to be a problem now. I'm spraying with Captan to control it, but it's already got a foothold. I should've started spraying regularly earlier to prevent it. On 8/30 I started to put on 0-0-60 muriate of potash fertilizer weekly for fruit development. &nbsb I'm still using 20-20-20 in addition to this. Have cut off numerous tertiary vines that started up with the past warm week we've had.
The green W-1 fruit has caught up with and surpassed the older A-1 fruit. It doesn't look like it too much in the photo, but it's remarkably spherical- not flattened at all. The basketball is an official size model. :-)
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W-1 at 37 days, 226 lbs. |
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A-1 at 45 days, 224 lbs. The scratches on the skin are from that leaf blowing back and forth across it when it was smaller. |
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S-2 at 36 days, 125 lbs. The S-2 fruit has slowed its rate of growth. Today I discovered stem stress is cracking the pumpkin off the vine. This one plant seems to have fairly brittle vines, so I expected this sort of thing. |
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What good is having a computer without using the tools?? Here's an updated weight growth graph for the 3 fruit...
