Summer Solstice (Almost)

I’ve learned quite a bit about growing pumpkins (or anything for that matter) since 2009. That’s when I thought I could simply put a seed in the ground and let nature take over. Last year was exciting, but the results were disappointing. I ended up with about a dozen pumpkins that never reached their maximum potential and I think we may have gotten one cherry tomato and something that looked like a cucumber.

Growth over a one week period

I thought that dirt was dirt and I failed to realize that plants need food too! Last year’s soil was in a different location, but the story was the same. The soil was used and abused and never renewed. As each passing day goes by I realize more and more that everything is energy and that energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes form. Plants, just like animals, need sunlight, water and food! At one point in time the soil at the plot may have had some nutritional value, but over the years the plants have absorbed those nutrients leaving the soil defunct. In a nutshell, a plant will only do as good as the soil it’s in. I wish I had a way to compare last year’s patch to this year’s, you’d see the difference!

So far I’ve only used two gallons of Fish Emulsion on the entire patch. The images below are a direct result of fertilizing. I fertilized the plants on the 15th of June and the images below are from the 20th. Wow! What a difference after giving them some food, water and plenty of sunlight! I fertilized the smaller plants again today to give them even more of aboost and I’ll likely fertilize again in about a week or so depending on how fast they are growing.

Today I manually pollinated an Atlantic female and I took some shots of my first pumpkin! It’s about the size of a baseball right now, it’s growing fast and it looks very healthy.