Update: I tore out the oldest of the pumpkins last night, the one that had the badly damaged vines. It just kept putting out leaves and vines and leaves and vines and no viable fruit. Ultimately, it got into a sun competition with the two broken-stemmed semi-determinate tomatoes at one end, shooting big fat leaves high above the tomato plants and blocking their sun.stella1751 wrote:I am having an extremely odd pumpkin year, partly because of adverse weather and partly because I did something I think will prove to have been seriously stupid. Just when the pumpkins had really spread out, developing some thick vines and putting on flowers, we had a really bad hail storm. The thick vines got pummeled pretty good and now have deep tan indentations all along them. I think this explains why so many female flowers are aborting before they even bloom. The vines are maybe too damaged to sustain life.
The stupid thing seemed like a brainstorm at the time. I had four tomato seedlings, three pumpkin seedlings, and one 8' x 4' raised bed. It seemed only logical to put the pumpkins in the middle of the bed and two tomatoes at each end. Now, however, the hail-damaged pumpkins are growing like mad, putting out vine after vine and enormous leaf after enormous leaf (everything but pumpkins) while the broken-stemmed, now-bushy tomatoes, which got their tops pounded by the hail, have barely managed to creep above the second level on their cages. There are tomatoes on the plants, but they are so low, they are now obscured by pumpkin leaves.
To make things worse, I swear those pumpkins are shooting out a foot of vine overnight. I try to direct the vines around the tomato cages, but every now and again, a vine rockets through a tomato cage in 24 hours. If worse comes to worse and the pumpkins start to seriously affect my tomato harvest, I'm going to have to pull those puppies. They are sugar pies, but I'm not handy enough to trellis 'em.
Oh well. Live and learn. Had it not been for the hail, my plan might have worked
Separating it from the younger pumpkins was easier than I thought. Wherever I saw a dark green vine with tan dents in it, I snipped and pulled, revealing two rather pathetic, sun-starved pumpkin plants beneath it. I really thought I had lost one of these in the hail storm; they were both so young then, just seedlings, that I am surprised they survived.
Now I am guiding their vines over the side of the raised bed. I don't really have a yard, not with all the rocks on top of my non-garden areas, so if they are truly determined to produce, they can do it someplace else.
Never again. Pumpkins, tomatoes, and hail do not mix
I still have no idea what killed it 
Post a photo if you do!
