Trip to Bulls
A couple of weeks ago I drove down to Bulls.
According to Wikipedia “Bulls is a small town north west of Palmerston North on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is in a fertile farming area in the Rangitikei District at the junction of State Highways 1 and 3 about 135 kilometres north of Wellington.”
For me that’s about a 4.5 hours drive down there and over 300km.
Why would I make a trip like that in 1 day? Because I’m slightly crazy. Also when it comes to pumpkin related stuff, it all seems to make sense.
I went down to meet Luke. A keen giant pumpkin grower. One who wants to push his pumpkins weight each year and is eyeing up the NZ record sometime in the future.
I also dropped off some mill fabric, and some spare seedlings I had on hand.
Luke’s Patch
Luke has a good amount of space available to grow some giant pumpkins. In fact he bumped up the space each plant had to around 100 square metres.
Start of the Season
It’s been a harsh start to the season for Luke. With a crazy amount of rain falling it’s not the ideal conditions you hope for.
This coupled with a little run in with some roundup spray drift has meant the season has not been as good as Luke hoped.
These setbacks push the start time meaning every stage of growth is also pushed backwards. This can be problematic if you are growing for a specific competition.
Time will tell how things pan out this growing season.
What I Should Have Done Differently
Every time I go to an event, or go somewhere or do something I end up thinking about how I would do things differently in the future.
I’m not sure if everyone does this, but I find it useful.
My takeaways for this trip were:
- I should have prepared a bunch more questions ahead of time. Even if I didn’t use them, I wouldn’t have to think on the spot of what to ask.
- I should have used a different mic setup. Due to the wind and how we were moving around I should have spent the 10 minutes to set the other mics up. Would have a better result.
- I should have taken more photos. I can pull them from the video if needed. But just need to slow down and think and take some photos.
Great Trip
It was a good trip. Great to meet Luke and see where the potential NZ giant pumpkin record may be grown.
Watering in the Tiny Patch 2.0
Back home in the Tiny Patch 2.0 my focus has shifted to looking at the watering setup.
Last season I used a hose reel and a watering wand.
It meant I had to pull the hose out to the Tiny Patch 2.0 or wind it back in when it was in the way.
I got sick of it.
It also meant I was watering by hand. Which I don’t mind. But with the work schedule I have I couldn’t always water when I wanted to.
This Seasons Upgrades
New Hose
As I will be away from the Tiny Patch 2.0 during the Christmas holidays. And due to the fact I hate pulling out and putting away the hose I decided to change some things this season.
First up, got another hose. While I thought 30m would be long enough, a 40m hose would have been better.
But they didn’t make a 40m hose in the one I decided to go with. Talking about hoses, they all seem to have terrible reviews online.
You have to find what seems like it would work for you at a price you are happy to pay for.
Make sure you follow the instructions to help reduce kinking.
That wasn’t so much of an issue as my plan was to lay the hose down and then leave it there. The problem with it being shorter than I needed is I had to use another hose to connect it to the tap.
Every time you add in another fitting you have another spot on the hose that could fail at some point.
Hose Laid Out
I’ve run the hose around the outside edge of the backyard and have it coming out near where the Tiny Patch 2.0 is.
I’m not 100% sure of the reasoning I had, but I thought a blue hose would make more sense in locating it.
I’ve never had trouble finding a green hose in the past. It would have blended in a bit better in some parts of the garden.
Water Timer
I’ve talked about automating your watering of your patch using timers before. Here and here to be exact.
If you can set something up, even for a small area it can greatly help your giant pumpkins growth. This is a basic water timer I’ve used before.
Sometime in the past, maybe in a video as I had trouble finding it in the blog I talked about a WiFi water timer I purchased way back in the day.
There are better solutions out there now that offer a few more features. One of which is the ability to add water sensors to your garden so you can tell how dry it is.
I remind myself that I don’t need to spend money on shiny new things and I should use what I have on hand.
It will help me water while I am away.
WiFi Water Timer Setup
There are a couple of parts to the WiFi water timer setup.
One part is the outside unit. This normally attaches to a tap. It then gives you 4 outlets you can connect hoses etc to.
To manually use it you press the button to either turn the outlet on or turn it off.
The other part to the system is this small box which connects to your home router.
Once that is done it can communicate to the outside unit. And things can be controlled from the phone app.
You can turn it on and off or set it for a certain period or you have the option of setting a schedule.
Different Setup This Time
This season I wanted to set up the outside unit at the end of my hose. Next to the Tiny Patch 2.0.
That allows me to run 4 shorter hose off it if needed.
I had to get some more connectors to make this happen. But it was simple enough. The unit is out there and it’s working well.
Sprinkler Type
I’ve again gone with what I’ve got on hand. But I think I might get something else.
Remember the small box that connects to the internet. Well they changed that.
Melnor being a great company they are, contacted everyone that had a unit and sent them a new one. Also a sprinkler to say sorry for the inconvenience.
Random side note: At the time of getting this WiFi watering system many years ago, I was the very first person in NZ to use this product.
Back to the sprinkler. After a bit of trial and error I got it to a point where it was watering where I wanted it to.
It’s still putting water all over the place. But once the plant is bigger it should be OK. I will look at other sprinkler types as I believe there are better ones out there.
Water Flow
How long should the sprinkler be on for? And how much water is it putting out?
Great questions to have. Even better to find the answers.
Last season I got my hands on this fancy looking litre meter. In fact I have a bunch of video shot and I’m currently staring at the draft blog post about is as I type this.
In a nutshell it tells you how much water you are using.
It works… when it works. More on that in a future post.
15 minutes of watering with this sprinkler puts out around 75 litres of water.
From that simple math tells me how much for 30 mins, an hour or longer.
Other Things I Want to Do
Now that I have the watering side of things mostly done, here are the other things I am currently working on.
Fertiliser Application
I want the ability to apply fertiliser while I am away remotely.
Years ago when I got the WiFi watering setup I also got a Venturi Siphon attachment. It looks like this:
At the time I couldn’t really get it to work as it was intended. In hindsight I think the water pressure was too high.
You think I can find where I put this. Not at all.
I’ve turned over most of the garage, garden shed and parts of the house trying to find this item. With no luck.
My plan was to have this attached to one of the spare outlets. Have a container with pre mixed liquid fertiliser in it. This would be sucked up and pushed out to another sprinkler or micro irrigation.
Current Plan for Fertiliser
I’ll keep looking for this Siphon attachment. It’s quite small so could be anywhere.
I’m not keen to buy another one of those now as they seem a lot pricier now than I remember.
I did however get some cheap ones from AliExpress. With Christmas coming up and general slowness in shipping I’m not holding out much hope of seeing those arrive in 2022.
There are a couple of DIY guides online. I will need to research those more and see if I can be bothered spending the money on parts and or making the thing.
Digging Up the Patch
I’m digging up part of the Tiny Patch 2.0 ahead of the plants growth. I want to be able to bury as much of the vines as I can.
The ground is so full of tree roots it’s a slow process. One that I hope pays off.
Show us Sunday
Now that you’ve caught up with what I am doing. Why not let everyone else know how your season is going.
Show Us Sunday is the post that you’ll find on the Giant Pumpkins NZ Facebook page every Sunday.
It’s a simple prompt just getting people to check in. Leave a comment or a photo and share what you are up to.
Thanks to everyone that already does. It’s great to see just how everything is going.
Growing giant pumpkins is a passion that I love sharing. 🎃 If you’ve found my content helpful or entertaining, why not say thanks with a coffee? ☕
It’ll fuel my next giant pumpkin adventure!