All good things...

Sometimes, things are over. This is one of those times.

The vines leading into our great pumpkin had withered away, so it was time to harvest the beast. I sent out an email announcing a celebration in the pumpkin patch to my friends at the Danforth Center, and there we gathered last Friday after work:



We chatted, ate some chips, and sampled 5 different varieties of pumpkin-flavored beer, including the local O'Fallon Pumpkin Beer, Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale, Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale, Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale, and Sea Dog Pumpkin Ale. They pretty much all tasted like somebody dropped a slice of pumpkin pie into the vat at some point during the brewing process. They ranged in quality from pretty awful to pretty good. My favorite that I tried was the Buffalo Bill's, but it's still definitely not something I could drink very often. I'm not going to say much else, because the links above have way more information than anybody could ever actually need about pumpkin beer.

There was also a high-stakes wager going about the weight of the pumpkin - people payed a whole dollar to guess, and it was winner-take-all the dollars. More on that later.

When we were getting ready to move the pumpkin, I discovered some nasty scars on its underside:



I was worried that the whole underside would be rotten, but when we rolled it over, it turned out that there were just a few, although pretty nasty, holes in the pumpkin. It looked like maybe some nasty little critters had chewed their way inside, because I also saw what looked like some yellow insect frass.



Anyway, when everyone was starting to get excited about weighing the pumpkin, I pulled out my weighing equipment, which basically amounted to 2 bathroom scales - the plan was to lay the palette with the pumpkin across the 2 scales, then add the weights that the 2 scales showed. Kudos to Christian for coming up with the idea. We slid some 2 x 4's through the palette to act as handles, then Pete, Chuck, Ted, and I carried it down the hill like real men, while Brian took some nice pictures:



A crowd of adoring pumpkin fans trailed closely behind:



First, we weighed the palette + the pumpkin:


Scale 1: 128.75 pounds Scale 2: 132.50 pounds

Scale 1 + Scale 2 = 261.25 pounds

A gasp went out from the crowd:



Then we took the pumpkin off, and weighed just the palette:


Scale 1: 39 pounds Scale 2: 36 pounds

Scale 1 + Scale 2: 75 pounds

So: Palette + Pumpkin - Palette = 261.25 pounds - 75 pounds =

186.25 pounds!



Ted wins 11 dollars!

So, it's no world record, but it's a darn good first attempt, and I made my goal - the pumpkin weighs more than I do, by 7.25 pounds. In fact, the pumpkin weighs as much as me, wearing boxer briefs and a t-shirt, and holding 1 18.6 oz can of Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle soup, 1 14.5 oz can of Wolfgang Puck's Signature Recipe Chicken Tortilla Soup, 1 11 oz box of Mrs. Allison's Golden Vanilla Wafers, 1 6-pack of Mott's Healthy Harvest No Sugar Added Granny Smith Apple Sauce, 1 40 oz jar of Schnucks Crunchy Peanut Butter, and Monster's blue stuffed monkey.

However, folks, this is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Halloween is still 7 weeks from tonight, so there's work to be done to preserve the pumpkin, carve the pumpkin, display the pumpkin, and of course, destroy the pumpkin.

Stay tuned.

XOXO,
Bert

It's been far too long...

But I'm glad to be back with you all...

I'm gonna level with you. The pumpkin is huge:



It's far surpassed my expectations, really, but the thing is probably about as big as it's going to get at this point. It's been a hot summer, and the vines are starting to die off, as is natural once the pumpkin starts to mature:



But there are still parts of the vine, unfortunately not the parts next to the giant pumpkin, that remain alive and are continuing to grow:



Those parts can keep on pumping more nutrients into the Highlander for a while. As long as there's any life in the vine directly feeding the pumpkin, we're going to leave it on there, and let it keep getting ridiculously humongouser. That'll probably be at least a couple more weeks. At that point, we'll have to get the pumpkin off the vine and get an official weight. My estimate at this point is in the range of 250-300 pounds. It outweighs me, I'm almost certain, so really, I'm thrilled.


I'll leave you with me and the pumpkin's future album cover. We haven't started a band yet, but this would look totally sweet:



XOXO

Yesterday, I couldn't pick it up.

Nuff said.

I'm from Missouri...

Okay, so you know how I've been writing this blog for a while now? And how every time you've checked it, you've seen some pictures of seeds, or vines, or talk about fertilizer or genes or something? Well, I bet you were starting to wonder why I call this the ridiculously humongous pumpkin blog, and not the blah blah blah blog. Well, as the title of this post says, I'm from Missouri, the "show me" state. So, I'm gonna follow the golden rule:
















Bam. That's a big pumpkin. At its widest point, this pumpkin's circumference is 173 cm (68 inches). So there you have it. I've shown you. I hope you're happy.

But, of course there's more to say. One of the big developments is that we're really now down to one pumpkin. Sarah H. is working on a second pumpkin on the other vine, but all my attention is now on this guy, because I really think he deserves it.




This isn't the world's greatest picture, but what you can see in the foreground there is my ultimate pumpkin defense system. It's a 4 foot cube of chicken wire, with a pallet inside. On top of the pallet is a tarp, and a pile of sand. The sand provides drainage to keep the pumpkin from rotting and also padding to prevent the pumpkin from crushing itself under its own massive weight. The only thing left to do is add some shade cloth, keep watering and fertilizing, and watch this sucker go crazy.

Hell yeah.

Pumpkin: 1, Vine Borers: 0.

Huzzah!

Look at those healthy vines!



Hear how I exclaim their Majesty and Health! They are MAJESTIC and HEALTHY!

Once more, Huzzah!

Not only are there vines, but there are pumpkins! The size and force of FISTS!



They have developed from the stems leading into flowers, for that is their way!



Upon the accession of such masterful fruit, the flowery progenitors crumble into the earth!




A taproot such as this could feed the hungry growth of a legion of lesser pumpkins, but this vine will feed the health of only ONE - the GREATEST pumpkin!




A sensitive portrait of whom will soon become a splendid, HUMONGOUS pumpkin!!!

Once more, and finally, HUZZAH!!!!!

Like a surgeon...

So this is a little bit of a historical post. This is about what happened last week, and I'll bring you up to date on current status in the next couple of days.

Last week, Sarah saw some holes in the pumpkins that she thought looked like they might be from squash vine borers. I was a little bit skeptical at first, probably just wishful thinking, but then we got a positive ID from Dr. Taylor. There were borers in the vines, and this was no time for trepidation, this was a time for action.

So, I got together some tools - razor blades, forceps, and composted manure, and I headed out to the pumpkin patch to do some surgery. I saw a couple of things. At first glance, I saw this:















You'll notice that the vine on the right is severely wilted, although the one on the left looks as perky as the girl who plans the office secret santa. Now, the vines do temporarily wilt sometimes on hot days (it's a water conservation response) but it's usually the whole vine or nothing - this doesn't look good for vine #1.

Looking closer unveiled the smoking gun:















That hole right there (with the brown, necrotic ring around it) is the squash vine borer's calling card - that's where it entered the vine to begin it's reign of terror. I simply could not let this stand.

So, with help from Jonathan, from Dr. Jan Jaworski's lab, I cut open the vine:















And we pulled those little scoundrels out:



Just look at him - he thought he could just sit there inside my vine, eating away, destroying our hopes and dreams of giant pumpkins. Well, he thought wrong. I tossed him and every one of his friends that Jonathan and I could find out into the tall grass to dessicate their way to a slow, painful death. To make sure the injured vines wouldn't suffer a similar fate, we covered the cut portions in a thick layer of composted manure to keep in moisture and keep out potential secondary infections:



The next night, I came through and sprayed a heavy coat of Sevin, a potent commercial insecticide, to ensure that no more pests tried to take up residence inside my vines. I made sure to spray after the flower buds had closed so that beneficial insects like bees would be unaffected. Bees are smart, they only touch the inside of the buds when they come to do their pollinating, so as long as you don't get pesticide inside the buds, you won't hurt them.

After that, there were a lot of risks, though: did I get them all? Would the insecticide have side effects for the plant? Would the injury to the vines from the surgery cause other problems? Even if everything went well, what effect would this episode have on the ultimate size of the pumpkin? Only time will tell...

XOXO

At last, several thousand words

There she is. That's the South Pumpkin, which is also a little bit uphill from the other. It's doing a good bit better than the downhill pumpkin, which had a tough time getting over the stress of the transplant to outside. But this guy is really taking off now. It's important to notice all the branches, because those branches allow the vine to quickly produce a lot more new leaves, which will lead to faster growth.



This is a female flower. Right below the little green bud, you can see a little green ball, which is about the size of a large pea. That's an actual pumpkin. Now, it will only start to grow and develop if the flower on top of it gets pollinated, which we won't do for at least a week or two yet. As long as we can, we'll keep the vine growing and adding new leaves so that we'll be able to produce the biggest pumpkin possible.




That big yellow bloom is a male flower. This picture was taken a week or two ago. At the moment, there aren't any blossoms open because we've been plucking all the male flowers off. When we're ready, we'll use a paint brush to collect pollen from the inside of that male flower and we'll place it in the female flower. If we're lucky, that pollen will fertilize the pumpkin and we'll get that little guy developing. We won't put all our eggs in one basket, though - we'll fertilize a number of flowers to make sure we get the right one.



This is a view from down inside the vine. It kinda reminded me of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" so I wanted to share it with you.

XOXO,
Bert