End of my 2020 Season

If you’ve been following along you would know that my season ended months ago. And while traditionally there are still a couple of pumpkin events still to go. The Corona pandemic ended the NZ 2020 season prematurely.

My 2020 Season Came to a Crashing End

My pumpkin stopped growing, rotted and had weird pink slime all over it. You can watch that in all it’s glory here:

I like to cover how the season went for me. Think of it as a review of my season. It helps me work out what went well or areas I could improve in the future.

Note taking during the season is important for all growers.

Beginning

I was happy with the date I started my seeds. It’s always a juggle between school camp and when I can get them outside into the tiny pumpkin patch.

But this year was good. The seeds started fine and everything looked like it was on track.

Start of seedling growth 2020 giant pumpkin season

Mid Season

The vine was growing in the wrong direction at the start which seemed like a pain. But over time I was able to turn it and get it in the right direction.

I had a lot of pumpkins appear and get pollinated. But pollination wasn’t ideal as I couldn’t hand pollinate them to pick the best one.

A big part of that problem was my work schedule, which meant I wasn’t available.

A lot of the pumpkins failed and things weren’t looking the best. But then one did start to grow.

Pumpkin starting to grow in patch 2020 season

Then it stopped. And we found out it was rotting.

I talked about this in this blog post blog post here. What caused it could be one of many things.

End

The late stage growth of the vine was really good. A shame there was no pumpkin at the end.

Pumpkin vines and leaves covering the tiny patch 2020 season

The plant looked healthy and I managed to have very little powdery mildew. I did do one early preventative spray which I felt helped.

Other Pumpkins

I managed to get 3 miniature pumpkins off of my plant I grew on the other side of the house.

Miniature pumpkins grown in 2020 season

This plant did a lot better than I thought it was going to.

I also got a Jack O Lantern pumpkin which I grew from a pot, and another smaller one called a Tiffany variety.

Jack o Lantern Pumpkin grown in 2020 Season

So while the giants were a bust this year, and they were for other people out there as well. I was happy I ended up with some pumpkins.

How Did it Go for Everyone Else?

While there are pumpkins out there, some may not have reached their optimum size. Was it the weather? Soil? genetics or something else? Hard to say.

But one thing that is a pain is due to a majority of events out there cancelled this year, a lot of pumpkins went unrecognised.

Planning and Other Things

I was happy with the planning I had done. This goes from the pumpkin starting to blog posts to social media. All of it.

Giving myself the goal of posting a blog post every single Monday, has given my consistency. Which I’ve felt has helped me through the season.

Sure it is hard to come up with ideas sometimes. But the process of writing things down every week was a good decision.

I’ll cover more about my 2021 planning in an upcoming blog post.

How was Your 2020 Season?

Did you season go to plan? Or was it a bad season? How much has this Corona virus disrupted your plans? I’d love to know, send me an email via the contact page, or leave a comment below.

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