The End of the 2018 Season

Another giant pumpkin season done and over with here in New Zealand, no video this week, I was going to smash one together, but there really hasn’t been anything video worthy happening the last couple of weeks, so instead you get a blog post.

Heavier Pumpkins???

With no real data as such, it appears that there were larger pumpkins appearing at different places around the country. Which means people were either having a really lucky season, or people were putting in more work to get better results. Whatever the case may be, it is exciting to see the general weights of pumpkins increasing across the board.

New NZ Record

As always a new NZ record is exciting, and being there to witness it getting weighed in brings just as much excitement to everyone that was there as Tim got from pushing his personal best even further.

Destroying a Pumpkin

Another highlight for myself was being there in person to witness the 808kg NZ Record pumpkin get dropped from a crane, awesome stuff indeed.

My Season

I felt that on the whole my season went really well. I managed to get a plant growing in the small tiny space I have, I had vines run out everywhere I could event though I couldn’t bury them and I had a pumpkin that was growing and was going to be the biggest pumpkin I have ever produced in the smallest patch around.

But the pumpkin stopped growing and rotted in the inside, so my season was over and I had nothing to take to put on the scales.

Things that worked well for me this season

  • I was happier with my seed starting this year, everything went smoothly.
  • I was following a fertilising programme and actually stuck with it and was seeing the results.
  • I was happy with the protection I had up for the pumpkin.
  • I wrangled the vines to work in the space they had to grow.

Things that I could have done better

  • I think the pumpkin needed a bigger more spread out bed of sand to grow on.
  • I need to think about the best way to apply water in humid conditions, to help prevent mildew problems.
  • I had grand plans of growing a lot of miniatures, but the area produced some, but not as many as I would have liked.
  • I thought I would have had a lot more interest from people wanting to be on the podcast, but it is a hard sell when you have to do it remotely from across the world, also I get the feeling people aren’t too sure about podcasts etc.
The current state of the patch

Plans for Next Year

  • I’m thinking about covering the patch in black polythene for the next 4 or so months to kill everything that is growing in there at the moment.
  • While I can’t bury the vines, I am liking the idea Becs on the Facebook group mentioned of burying the vines into bags of compost. I’m just wondering how cost effective this would be and what to do with the bags after the season finishes.
  • I might use a different timer setup to provide water to the area, I really should hook up the WiFi watering system I have, which will allow me to control it even if I’m not at home.
  • I want to load up the small garden area with as much organic material as possible, and add worm castings.
  • I’m pushing forward with the podcast, I need to get outside of my comfort zone and talk to more people and get the interviews recorded.

That’s the plan for now, of course I’m keen to still take photos and video and document what I am up to, it gives me a great record to compare later on, and it helps me to keep working on other skills as the season goes forward.

I’m hoping to get to some new pumpkin events next year as well as connecting more with these events to get results and photos back from them to share with you.

I hope the reflecting on this season and planning for next season is going well for you, whatever your plans are.

Bring on the 2019 season

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x
Scroll to Top