Giant Jack-O-Lanterns

A couple pictures of Champion0607's largest 2 pumpkins after they were carved...

BigPunkin's Pumpkin Commits Suicide

Spartan Pumpkin

The finished product

Giant Pumpkin Goes to K-State

Brett and kids made a trip to Manhattan Kansas to watch the K-State/Baylor game and brought Corey a 164 pound pumpkin. He and his friend Josh Cherry were so excited. They spent 4 hours designing and carving.

2007 Pics

Here's a giant post of pictures from Cindy and Champion0607

The 2007 champion on the day of harvest.

The Wilson (Champion0607) pumpkin patch. You can see the frames of the wind-destroyed greenhouses/hail shelters we put up to protect from hail storms.

Our neighbor and I managed to get all the pumpkins in the wheelbarrow and in the back of our van by laying the wheelbarrow on its side, positioning the pumpkin partway inside and then tilting it back up. Once we got to the house, we rolled them out of the van down a 2x10 ramp. Next year if we have the same success, we've got to get a good tarp with handles.

The Wilson kids (Hunter, Isabella, Orion) lounging on their pumpkins.

sqwash82's 140lb'er (on the towel). This pumpkin takes the "prettiest" pumpkin award.


Other entries seen in this picture are Heath's pumpkins (two stacked and one on the floor to the right), bigpunkin (yellow one standing upright), Nicole&Matt's 15lb entry (just to left of the tarp), and Cookie's pumpkin and giant cantaloupe in the left foreground.

Cindy's picture of all the kids at our end-of-year party. My 5 month old daughter Sabrina is the only kid not in this picture (17 kids total!). Nice shot of Barley's rear end to the right.

Jim's Bonsai pumpkin, complete with cradle.


Ahhh, the horror!!!!!!! What did Cindy and Herb do to this poor thing?

Bigpunkin with a nice looking entry at 41lbs. I'm 90% certain this came from the same seed packet as the champion 293. I gave the plant to Bigpunkin once he killed off everything else people had given him. The stem was partially broken during a wagon-riding incident to the Wilson's garden prior to that, so it took a while to recover before it started growing well.

Champion0607 drawing out the pirate on the 159lb'er

sqwash82, girlfriend Tammy, and Orion digging out sqwash82's 2nd biggest.

Completed carvings. The two smaller ones to the left were done by Heath's kids. The one on the left is Spongebob Squarepants, the other one says Mason, the name of their dog they had to put to sleep last week. The small one to the right by the Lee kids (with some "help" by Orion), the Pirate was done by the Wilsons, and the Moon/Cat by sqwash82 and Tammy.

Orion and Raina with the 2007 carvings.

Carvings with the lights of Colorado Springs in the background.

Final look at our artwork.

Official Results 2007

The "official" weigh-in and carving occurred last night at our house (pics to follow this post). Results are:

• Champion06 293lbs 65x67x102 (front-to-back, side-to-side, circumference)
• Champion06 189lbs
• Champion06 164lbs
• Champion06 159lbs
• Champion06 145lbs
• skwash82 140lbs 54x51.5x74.5 (front-to-back, side-to-side, circumference)
• skwash82 97.5lbs
• Cookie 70lbs
• bigpunkin 42lbs
• Heath 24lbs
• Nicole&Matt 15lbs
• Cindy ugliest pumpkin award
• Jim M. late entry, but winner of both the "bonsai pumpkin" and "giant zucchini"

Everybody, let's see those pictures!!!!!

Champion0607

Disappointing year...

Well, the plants got huge but the pumpkins did not. :( We have a pumpkin that would look great being sold at a grocery store except that it's still yellow. Next year will be better!!

Picked the Pumpkins

We harvested the pumpkins on 04 Oct 07 before our trip to Manhattan Kansas because it was suppose to freeze. We only picked two because the others were pretty much destroyed by the deers. One pumpkin looks like it is the 'elephant man' pumpkin. It was nibbled on by something but still continued to grow. It's pretty ugly. The other one might weigh 41 pounds, has a nice shape but is yellow. Pretty disappointing growing season for us. There's always next year.

Turning Orange

At the time of this picture the pumpkin was estimated to be 110lbs and was still growing about 9lbs a week. The colder temps this week may have slowed its growth, but hopefully it will continue to put on some weight until the big weigh off.

9/21/07

wildest pumpkin plant

Just cause I don't have big pumpkins doesn't mean I shouldn't get an award for the wildest plant!

Our little babies are growing up...

No, I'm not talking about Orion, Isabella, Hunter, and Sabrina, although they are also getting bigger. Here's the latest pics from the Wilson garden. We've been spared the worst of the hail, although we had some very minor damage last week. I think we might have met the goal of getting a pumpkin that weighs as much as the kids combined (approx 110lbs). If we can keep them growing through September, maybe we can throw Mom and Dad in there too :-) Right now we have 8 pumpkins, the smallest is just bigger than a basketball (I think it may have stopped growing). The 4 "Big Orange and Beautiful" all probably weigh 50-100 lbs. The other 4 are from the 1060lb seed. I think 2 of those are 100+ lbs. Hope for a warm September...

This one started out the biggest, but the one below may have caught/surpassed it. I'm guessing both of these are 100+?
Orion, Isabella, and Hunter are very proud of their pumpkins.
Here's the biggest "Big, Orange, and Beautiful" pumpkin. It might go 100+ also. It is definitely much more orange than the others. This one plant has four of these, with two near 100lbs, and the other two 50-75?

Monument Pumpkins

Unfortunately my camera is broken. We have three nice pumpkins with the biggest probably a little bigger than a basketball. Meghan will be here this weekend so I will borrow her camera and take some pictures.

New Photos

Well my pumpkins are still growing, below are some recent pictures of my 2 pumpkins. The pumpkin in the first picture is the same pumpkin as in the August 1st picture in my last entry. The other picture is of my newest pumpkin. The Final picture is some lightening.

August 15th

August 15th

August 11th

Update from the Champs

Pumpkins are growing well. Had a big scare last night when I thought the vine leading to the biggest pumpkin was split wide open. Turned out it was just a broken off leaf. Had to pull the vine a little bit (very carefully!) to release some tension on it that is already starting to form. Right now we have 6 pumpkins bigger than a basketball with the largest in the pictures below.

Hunter with "Big Momma"

2nd largest

Orion and Isabella with "Big Momma"

Orion's Watermelon

29 Jul

5 Aug


Jul 29

5 Aug

Pumpkins survived last nights rain/hail wasn't sure as the apple tree right beside them got blown over by the wind. Doesn't look like big pumpkin grew all that much this last week but little ones grew quite a bit.

Rejected !!!

Last night while looking at the pumkins, Herbie got very excited because it looked like a female flower would be ready for some action in the morning. This morning Herbie was already for some pumpkin sex but the female flower was not opened. Rejected!! He thinks maybe a bee beat him to it!! Wayne is going to design a bee suit for him to help him increase his chances for some pumpkin sex. Wait until you see where we're gonna put the pollen!

Luck with the females.....

Well, so far this year is 100% better then last year. My pumpkins made the transition to the big outside world, and are doing pretty good. Below is a pic. of one of the largest leaves on the 500/700 Atlantic Giant plant.

August 1st

So far I have had pumpkin sex 3 times and had success on all 3. What can I say I am pretty good with the ladies!!!!! Below is a pic. of my largest pumpkin to date. I had pumpkin sex with this one on the 26th of July. (Oh and my ball is a size 5)

August 1st

No Pumpkins Yet

It is 01 Aug 07 and we have no pumpkins. No female flowers either. We are getting a bit nervous but not giving up yet. The cute little green houses are gone since the plants have out grown them. Didn't have any hail protection for about two weeks and got back to back hail storms. One plant took a lot of damage and the other two faired pretty well. Herbie finally decided he would make hail protection for each of the plants. Of course we haven't had any hail since the nice (not ghetto) structures were made. The plants have also outgrown these too. I am having problems with my camera so once that gets fixed I will take some pictures.

What a difference a week makes. First pumpkins still doing well from what I can tell but this week I did take the advice of the experts and terminated one of the pumpkins. They were really to close to each other but it still was hard to do. With that being said, I do have two new additions to my pumpkin family on the plant that I didn't think was going to survive. How is everybody else doing?

22 Jul 29 Jul

Pumpkins still growing well but with all this hot weather big plant showed some signs of wilting so need to add a couple more drip lines to the base. Also had to loosen up the soil around the plants as it was as hard as a rock. Will see what next week brings, should have some new pumpkins on smaller plant as it is showing signs of promiscuity.

15 Jul 22 Jul

15 Jul 22 Jul

Ghetto hail protection

So here is a picture of the garden with the hail protection over it. We used 1/4 inch landscaping material and u-posts. Definitely not the most attractive garden but very functional. This is pumpkin number one (the one on the right in the picture above). It comes from a 200 lb pumpkin. It's being very slow to grow. (The posts are a little less than 3 feet apart.)
This is the plant from the 350 lb pumpkin. It's got 1 male flower that opened and died and the startings of many male and female flowers.

These pictures were taken on the 18th of July.