Colorado Pumpkin Party

The Wilson's hosted the Colorado Pumpkin Party last night (19 Oct 09). Everyone had pumpkins to weigh except the Adams family. The picture above has Wayne & Linda's, Matt & Nicole's, the Wilson's and some non competition pumpkins. Expect bigger and better things next year from the Colorado Chapter. Two lessons learned from this year: Start earlier and get some hail netting. The Adams Family next year will be trying some innovative things so watch out.

Wayne and Linda with their 5 pound pumpkin

The Strizich family with 2 of their pumpkins. Weights 71.2 pounds and 70.2 pounds. Not bad for rookies.

The Forsyths (Matt & Nicole) with their biggest pumpkin to date weighing in at 109.5 pounds. Very good effort this year!

The Wilson's with their pumpkins. Brett only weighed two pumpkins. Their biggest was 123 pounds and the carved pumpkin weighed in at 89 pounds.

And finally, the Pearsall's pumpkins. I believe the two largest are the Montrose pumpkins with the smallest belonging to Josh & Tammy Pearsall (the newlyweds). The official weights for the two largest have been posted previously. Josh & Tammy's pumpkin weighed in at 30 pounds.

Strizich Harvest

Harvested on 10/1. The Strizich GIANT weighed in at a whopping 71 lbs! followed by 70, 63, 44 according to our scale...which Susan reminded weighs a bit heavy.

Montrose Harvest

The cold finally pushed my dad to harvest. In the first picture below you can see the lengths taken to extend the growing season (hair drier and drop light).

Next the 2 small entries from the Montrose garden with weights and measurements.

Left in pic. - 114Lbs, 52" Stem-Blossom, 46" Side-Side, and 83" Circumference

Rigth in pic.-102Lbs, 50" Stem-Blossom, 47" Side-Side, and 78" Circumference

Finally the big one on the scale (weight in bottom left is without my dad on the scale), measurements and seed info can be found in the bottom right of the picture. For those of you who don't believe the picture the pumpkin will be at my house this Friday (Oct. 9th 2009), and can be viewed by appointment by any skeptics. I will also bring the big one and one of the small ones to the Wilson’s house for the Oct. 19th pumpkin party.

306 Lbs, 65" Stem-Blossom, 66" Side-Side, and 102" Horizontal Circumference

My Grandma, the other half of the Montrose group, gave in at the first hard freeze and gave away her pumpkins without measuring or taking pictures of the 2009 success.

Snow and Pumpkins - Not a good mix

Sept 23, 2009 Monument Colorado. We were on our way to a record setting growing season for the Monument pumpkins and then what? SNOW!!! We just needed a couple more weeks of nice weather to get the biggest pumpkin ever. NOT!! Actually we have the best looking plants we have ever had but no pumpkins. Our first two pumpkins rotted. We have some very small pumpkins but not enough time for them to do anything. Watch out for next year. We will be doing some creative stuff.

Griffey enjoying his first snow. He's a wild thing!

Montrose Pumpkin Part 2

Montrose pumpkin patch 2 - Joining the pumpkin growing contest this year after a disappointing 2008 season is my grandma. Below are a few pic. of her 2009 plants. First the plant that never did much, but atleast it didn't die.

Next the plant with all her hopes of the big one. The pumpkin plant has 2 nice looking pumpkins, one of 128 inches and of of 129 inches corresponding to 51 and 52 lbs respectively.

Hail! Yikes!

But no worries - our giants are still intact! The biggest pumpkin is 141 inches for 61 pounds and the 3 other are just slightly smaller.

bummer!

Matt added wrong. He wrote down the numbers I gave him and somehow got 181 inches. It's really 151 inches or ~79 lbs. Still the biggest one we've ever gotten but not over 100 lbs. :(

Woo-hoo!

I think we've got our biggest pumpkin ever! The first picture is the biggest pumpkin which is 181 inches or ~130 lbs. It is starting to look a little darker yellow (maybe even a hint of orange in it) so it might be pretty close to being done but I'm hoping to get another 50 lbs in it. The second pumpkin picture is the second biggest. I honestly don't know how big it is. It's not in a place where I can get to it to measure it very easily. But it's still really yellow so maybe it will pass the big one...

Montrose Pumpkin Part 1

Montrose Pumpkin Patch - In the picture below the biggest pumpkin can be seen in the back shaded by the tarp. At the time of the picture (9/1/09) the pumpkin measured 193 inches corresponding to a weight of 155 lbs.Below is another picture of the large pumpkin. On 9/7/09 it measured 213 inches and had an estimated weight of 204 lbs.

Game Over

The Colorado weather finally got the best of the Wilson (Champion0607) pumpkin patch. A heavy hailstorm last evening pretty much eliminated any chance of growing a substantial pumpkin. Take a look at the pictures and try not to cry (we couldn't hold our tears back). Well, maybe it will give a chance to the other "competitors" to take first prize...

The 2 plants had pretty much covered our 400 sq ft plot. Everything outside the hoophouse got destroyed. Leaves that were 18 inches across are now just shreds. Note the healthy leaves inside the hoophouse compared to what's left outside...

Here's a closer shot of the damage...All of the pumpkins that had set are now heavily pitted from the hail. Even the young female flowers that hadn't even opened yet were all hit.Here is our biggest pumpkin (almost volleyball size). Even if it continues to grow, it isn't going to be a pretty pumpkin. But at least it can't be as bad as the Adams' entry a couple years ago (or could it)?

So next year we're going to get serious...I've already been looking up hail netting on the internet. I'm going to cover our entire 800 sq ft of garden for next year. We won't settle for less than 500 lbs.

Good luck to the rest of you. Hopefully the warm weather will hold through early October so we can see some giant ones...

Life lessons and pumpkins

Brett teaching his sons about "the birds and the bees" of pumpkin growing.

Orion pollinating a female pumpkin plant.Brett and Orion looking for more female flowers.

We have about a dozen pumpkins this size - that is Orion's hand sitting on the pumpkin, not Sabrina's

The spies were out again ...

This is what the spies found in the Strizichs' pumpkin patch. Looks like they are trying to pull a fast one.Upon closer inspection the spies found what the plant is actually growing.
At least this one is orange.

This ought to get things moving!!

Herbie's birthday present (from my sister and brother-in-law) to help the pumpkins along. Guarenteed by Harding's Nursery

Be on the lookout for spies...

I found these pictures, left anonamously, of the Wilson pumpkins. Don't worry Wilsons, I was assured that no sabatage was done.





The plant's pretty big and leaving the greenhouse but no evidence can be found of male flowers...


There was one female flower though open outside of the greenhouse. Brett, you're missing you window for polination!


I think the spy came to the conclusion that the Wilson's haven't been posting this year because there's nothing to post about...

Monument Hail July 20th, 2009

About 11:30 pm Monday night a pretty good storm went through. Lots of hail, rain and wind. The pumpkin house took a beating but the pumpkin plants came through it pretty well. Herbie is out side right now redesigning the pumpkin house. We also have our first male flower!!

Wayne's Pumpkins 20 Jul 09

Here are updated pictures of Wayne's pumpkins. There are so many leaves that he can't even see what's underneath. The winner could be growing as you read this. Wayne had to hurry to get pictures taken of the pumpkins because the mosquitos are really bad this year. He swears they are as big as the butterfly.

Polinated Girl Flower

Our first girl flower was polinated late last week. Hopefully it starts growing fast!

Monument Pumpkins July 19th

Here are our pumpkins on July 19th, 2009. All three are vining and all have at least one female flower. Looks like the males are showing up. It also looks like some bug is eating at them. Jerome and Griffey are excellent guard dogs