Comments

Posted by Hisirishgem

I'll post in my blog in the next couple of days but I have a question.

This year the seeds from last years baking pumpkins were planted in the ground. Very early to say the least. Anyways, the vine grew and grew and grew. About June I started seeing cute pumpkins from off the flower then it would rot. I posted it awhile ago in my blog and someone said it sounded like dry rot. How does dry rot happen in pumpkins and why? I read where it said I can't plant them in the same place again next year. All my flowers are in that area and I was wondering if that will kill the flowers next year? I don't know too much about dry rot. Just wondering if you pumpkin planters have any tips for me for next year? I'm so disappointed and don't know what I did, nor what to do once I sew the seeds to make the pumpkins grown normally.

I will post in a day or two on my blog the pics again of the pumpkins before they rot so you may see what they look like.

Thanks so much for such awesome teachings!

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Posted by Kitty

I got so agrivated with my spring garden not producing much after all the work I had put into it, that I was done in and didnt plan a fall garden. I know that was not the right attitude but the heat and humidity got to me, LOL. (thats my excuse, and Im sticking to it).
I do continue to work with my compost pile tho, and the other day I noticed that a butternut squash that I had thrown in as garbage had taken and was growing. So my fall gatherings consist of 1 butternut squash, which I WILL bake in the oven with cinamon and sugar and I will enjoy it too. LOL
Kitty

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Posted by Hisirishgem

Of my poor dry rot pumpkins. Come take a look and tell me your thoughts! ((wink))

I'm glad I'm not the only one that didn't have a productive garden this year. Last years container gardens came out wonderful. This year? Even my tomatoe plant grew REAL tall but no fruit produced. My flowers grew, but not like last year. Cough it up to maybe the weird weather? I don't know.

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Posted by southofthegnatline

Our tomatoes did AWFUL! They were pitiful. These we planted directly in the ground and not in a raised bed - we kinda played around w/directly in the ground vs. raised bed - the raised beds won hands down. Most everything that we planted directly in the ground did terrible. But some things I would imagine have to be just in the ground - like a watermelon and pumpkin patch.......so I'm not sure what the magic is. I know the northeast is where they grow those gianormous pumpkins (I think the pumpkin festival is in Cooperstown, NY????) - so maybe it is just too hot here? Dunno. Our tomatoes were so bad I was embarrassed to say we grew any.......LOL!

Harriette

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Posted by MrsBurns

I have never grown pumpkins. I have seeds, but like some other bloggers here, I get so busy harvesting in late June and early July, I forget to plant the pumpkin seeds. I have grown cantaloupes and watermelons in year's past.

Harriette: I think most of the pumpkin seeds that we can buy are adapted to the NE. When I attended a Team Ag Georgia workshop last year, one of the UGA professors stated he was aware of seed experimentation and field trials of a big pumpkin that will grow in GA. So don't take your lack of success personally. I think it's either a "zone" thing or a seed thing.

On the dry rot issue, I'll look at my organic books and see what they say. I am familiar with blossom end rot, which can affect tomatoes and summer squash. I would imagine it could impact pumpkins, too, being in the nightshade family. It took me a while to figure out I was losing yellow squash to BE Rot...I would see a perfectly formed, smallish squash, and then the next morning, it would have this black fuzzy stuff on the blossom end. I'm a little slow and a lot inexperienced in the garden, so that accounts for a lot! Lack of moisture can be a factor in BE Rot. I'll look at the dry rot, though....that might be an affliction I've avoided to date but that's waiting to descend on me next summer!

Otherwise, great looking pumpkins. I have nothing planted for fall, unfortunately. I have seeds but a lack of time and a need for soil amendments. Anyone who wins the lottery can send me a gift certificate for worm castings and compost, with a dump truck load of topsoil thrown in for good measure!

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Posted by Suze321

We've always had a terrible time here in PA with pumpkins, squash and other vined veggies. The problem here is that we'd get great growth, beautiful flowers and the fruit would start. Sometime shortly thereafter, the vines would wither along with the leaves and, once that supply line was cut, the fruits would go. The culprit here is vine borer, and apparently they're prevalent throughout the East and South. Hopefully this link will work, it's to a PDF document that talks in great detail about the vine borer, non-curcurbit rotation, and other organic controls: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/squashbore.pdf.

After trying just about everything, we finally gave up on pumpkins, squash and cukes. Given our love for these, it was a rather sad decision to have to make.

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Posted by mc2rwe

Well I haven't taken pictures yet but I can definitely tell you that I am having a blast with what little I did plant. Last year I planted a huge spring garden and just about everything that I had planted came up and then turned an ugly brown and withered away. I can understand maybe one or two plants doing this but not the whole garden!!! I found out it was due to a chemical that they spray around here for the rice fields to keep the mosquitoes at bay. They stop spraying at the end of June. I started planting this year in July. I am just now having tomatoes on the vines and cucumbers out my ears and my squash plants have finally started producing. The zucchini... ahh the zucchini... they just won't stop producing. But I have been blessed with a little farm that has lots of fruit trees!!! I have apricots, plums, pears, apples, figs, peaches and the walnut and pecan trees. That in and of itself is awesome. I stayed so busy canning all of those fruits that I was okay with not being able to start the garden until late.
Kathy

Edited by mc2rwe on Sep. 18, 2006 at 08:45 AM

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Posted by CatherineAnn

Harriette,

Your pumpkins are cute! Sorry I can't be of help in the pumpkin patch area- they don't grow well in my area of the south- even the "pumpkin patches" here buy theirs and truck them in ;) ! I think they like cooler weather. We did plant some and got a few small ones like you, and have even had some volunteers spring up around the compost pile, but no great pumpkins grew for us either ;) . Thanks for jumping in and helping while I was offline- you're a blessing!

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