Christmas Eve Update

Hiya

I thought I would get this update in before Christmas and before I head off around the different places catching up with people.

It has been a strange old end to the year, but I am looking forward to next year, with more stuff happening on all fronts, I am sure it will be a busy one.

Weeds, weeds, weeds
You don’t check on the patch for a little while, and it soon becomes hard to spot the pumpkins for the weeds, well for me it wasn’t too hard, but it sure was crazy seeing the growth of the weeds.  So I managed to get rid of a bunch of them, and still have more to do but had to call it a day with it being too hot.  Here are some pictures of what I was dealing with.

Lots of weeds around the giant pumpkin plant
As you can  see, the above was an extreme example of the weeds and crap growing everywhere, the pumpkin plant itself isn’t a giant variety, and I keeping it a surprise to what it actually is.

And here is the after photo:

Weeds removed from around the pumpkin plant
The stems and leaves are all looking a bit droopy, but this was down to the weeds sort of holding everything up, I am sure over time they will start to look normal again.

Onto the giant varieties, here are some photos of what they have been looking like.
Giant pumpkin plant with weeds
Giant pumpkin plant with lots of grass and weeds
There is no after shot of this one, as I didn’t get around to it, was too hot a tired by then, and it is Christmas Eve.  So this one will have to wait until next time, the plant is looking really good.

Split stem
While kneeling down and pulling weeds out on my plant from the American seed, I saw the main stem coming out of the ground was twisted a bit and split open, I took a photo for you to see.

Stem split in the giant pumpkin plant
While I am not too worried about this, as having seen it before on a plant last season, it could potentially cause problems later, but with the nice dry weather we have it should be OK.  It also makes me wonder if this is a contributing factor to the slowish growth and smaller size of this plant compared to the other one.

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Dinzie
12 years ago

We had that stem split last year. They still grew but do wonder what causes it. Like too fast a growth or too much water …..

Merry Xmas best wishes for the new year..

Jenny
12 years ago

You are a dag, Sam :”Make sure they get some water over the hot summer period……”

Happy New Year and happy holidays

ivo
12 years ago

hi Sam,
regarding your split stem, if you buried the vine deeper or packed soil around the stem while it is still young….. and before it does its first “turn” to the ground, the vine wont split.
as you know the plant when young grows vertical and as the weight builds up it starts to turn to the ground, and that first turn is the direction of your main vine, the second (smaller) main grows from there. at this point the root stem is under alot of stress with the turn.
you could always plant the seedling at an angle and avoid the stress.
hope this helps you.
ivo

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