Happy Pumpkins!

[cherishedtiger]

Well, I cut down my watering thanks to everyones awesome advice! And it seems to have made my pumpkins the happiest!!! I took some photos the other day, just to keep progress of how they are doing. Then last night I went out and found 2 more!! just happily growing and getting ready to drop their flowers (I hope they are pollinated well!)










As you can see the one hidden in the vine and weeds is already orange! It was my first, the rest all just started popping up! Please, nevermind the weeds... its my goal to get out there and get rid of them, luckily where the plants are there are no weeds, as the vines are growing out onto the lawn out of a raised bed.

[garden5]

Wow, that's great!

I finally got a nice pumpkin to grow this year . By nice, I mean that it was larger than a baseball .

Funnily enough, the vine just started growing in a compost/weed area, so I let it...and sure enough, a small pumpkin started to grow and now it is about the size of a football.

Glad to hear you are having pumpkin successes, as well.

[stella1751]

I love the ones that hide on you; what a nice surprise to discover them! I'm like a miser with his gold when it comes to my garden, especially cucurbits. Each morning I count how many watermelons and pumpkins I have. Yesterday, both of 'em surprised me with a fruit I had missed, probably for several days. They may not mature before the first freeze, but I don't care, as long as I can include them in my count

[cherishedtiger]

So Stella, here is a question for ya! The pumpkins that hide, and are usually covered by big pumpkin leaves, or in my case weeds, are they ok without sunlight on them? Or does the sun requirement only pertain to the plant its self and not necessarily the fruit?
Wanna make sure they get what they need!

I love my pumpkins, first year growing them!

[stella1751]

I'm not 100% certain, Cherished Tiger. I believe the fruit doesn't need the sunshine to ripen, just the leaves. If I am wrong, I'll lose half my watermelons

[TheWaterbug]

I'm not 100% certain, Cherished Tiger. I believe the fruit doesn't need the sunshine to ripen, just the leaves. If I am wrong, I'll lose half my watermelons

I'm not sure what to make of this "evidence," but here's what I experienced last year when I planted very late and suffered many squirrel-induced losses. All my pumpkins were green at Hallowe'en, but when I harvested several the spot on the bottom was orange.

I also had these ridiculous plastic chicken-wire cylinders around the fruit to protect them from the squirrels, and some of the pumpkins grew bigger than their cages, and so were just busting out of their cylinders. When I pulled the chicken wire off the pumpkins, there was an orange pattern on them that matched the chicken wire exactly.

So in both of these cases the areas _not_ exposed to sun were orange.

[cherishedtiger]

Very interesting.... I guess I will just let mother nature take her course and see what happens! Though... I still don't think that will get me out of cutting down the weeds that are quite tall now...

[cherishedtiger]

sad day, the first little pumpkin (1st pic) doesnt look like it got pollinated and is dying off.
Too far away from the rest of the plant to attract the bees I guess.