As you folks may or may not know, I"ve moved to Kingman Arizona. I've got a place now that has a lot of land around it for growing a lot of veggies. Growing veggies is my way of relaxing.

My real dream however has been to try my hand at growing GIANT veggies. Of this, i've ALWAYS wanted to try my hand at the Alantic Giant Pumkin. These are the biggest pumkins growing. Even the seeds are huge! So I'm going to keep my journal here on the web page. I'll update it at least once a week with all the results, good or bad.

if you have any suggestions or comments please email me nvseabee@citlink.net

Got tired of trying to get these damned seeds to germinate. I've tried all the different methods as i've read in books and other web pages. NOTHING. I've got four seeds left I'm going to stuff these in the ground and see what happens. I put them between two sheets of moist paper towels and put them under my sink for about 10 days. NOTHING! not a root, not a thing. So in desperation into the ground they went. I simply punched them into the ground about 1", tossed a bunch of steer manure over the top and water the hell out of it.

Your not going to beleive this. Two of the seeds germinated and are showing leaves. in just 5 days. Incredable. All I did was push the seeds into the ground about an inch and toss some steer manure over the top of the ground and watered the hell out of them!

A week later and there are already the second set of leaves on the seedlings. Compared to the other pumkins i have growing these leaves are huge! If they keep growing at this rate I may be in trouble as well as my garden. I'm afraid they might take over! We'll see.

I piled up about 2 inches of straw mulch around the seedlings to help keep the gound moist and the roots cool. It gets pretty hot here in the desert.

The pumpkin plants are gaining more and more leaves every day. IN fact, a third plant popped up and its doing as well as the other two. I'm going to stick with just the three plants. If these things get as big as I've read about I'm in big trouble space wise. I cant beleive how much these have grown in just 2 weeks.

Havent been on here for a while. We're talking major take over of the garden soon. Its' been just over four weeks since those seeds went into the ground. They have leaves over two feet in diameter and length. They have runners already over 4 feet long. In fact I had to take the petals off of a female flower that was already forming to close to the base of the plant. If I had let that pumkin grow it would have either snapped the neck off the fruit or pulled the plant out of the ground. I decided to wait a bit. I've got lots of time to let the fruit set. But these buggers are taking off. If they are this big after only four weeks, whats going to happen in two more months, or six?

OK! about 6 weeks now in the ground. i've got runners over 6' long, i'm snipping off setting fruit untill the plant gets bigger. I figure its to soon to start letting the female flowers start setting fruit. I want to wait untill the plant's get at least 12' of runners. THEN i'll start letting fruit set and start polinating them. I'm still amazed at the speed these plants are growing and the size of them.

Curious, I wanted to find out just how fast these runners were growing. I put a stake at the end of the runner in the morning and measured the growth from there. In a 24 hour period the runners are gowing an average of 12". Of this, about 5" is attained during the day and the rest in the overnight hours. Its almost as if the plants are storing up energy during the day and doing their gorwing at night. I always thought it was the other way around. But, what the heck do I know? ( A lot more now than before I started the amazing plants.)

Went out and polunated 6 of the female blossoms today. Never make the statement your going out to polunate your pumpkins within earshot of anybody who doesnt understand what your doing. Raises a lot of eyebrows! I've got over a 20 foot spread on my runners now. so I figure its a good time to get started. lets hope for at least one good one.

Happy Fridy the 13th!

Well, I've several fruit now about half the size of a football. I guess I'll have to decide pretty soon which ones I'm going to keep and let grow. I THink I got it narrowed down to three or four. I still cant get over how damned fast this plant is growing. I'm starting to bend the runners around in corners of the yard. If I dont they are going to climb right over the fence and into the neighbors yard across the street. I'm still feeding them a half strengh solution of Peters 20-20-20 once a week. I've got good healthy looking huge leaves. I used to know some fan dancers when I was in the Navy who could use these leaves. ( maybe not, she's probably almost 60 years old now!)

I've got it narrowed down to just four pumpkins now. I started measuring them four days ago. In just those four days they have grown very noticably. The smallest grew from 21 to 27 inches in circumferance and the largest went from 16 to 31 inches in circumferance. I've decided that with all the roots that these runner put down, placement of the sprinkler is really important. Each pumpkin is between 10 and 20 pounds right now. And keep in mind these were seeds just 8 weeks ago. TWO MONTHS and look!

I'm down to three pumpkins now. One stopped growing and I figured if he's not growing, he's not going to use up resources. OUT HE CAME! But the three that are left are doing quite well. The smallest one has grown 35 to 41 inches bloom to stem measure in the last 4 days. the largest has gone from 37 to 49 inches in the same 4 days again measuring stem to blossom. I'm not sure if this is normal, sub-normal or above average but I'm impressed as hell! They get another feeding this week end. I'm wondering if I should scratch in some time realease fertilizer as well. Growing at this rate they must be ravenous feeders.
I've decided that next year I'm going to start earlier and prepare the soil better and keep my notes i'm making and I"M GOING FOR A RECROD! If not THE record.

Still have my three pumpkins all growing quite well. the largest is over 62 inches around now. I'm guessing its in the neighborhood of about 90 pounds. All i'm doing now is watering it every day, twice a day and feeding it 1/2 strenght Peters 20-20-20 once a week. The runners I've had to wrap around and come back on themselves because they were starting to grow out of they yard and into the neigbors. So its getting pretty thick out there with vines and leave and pumpkins.

Still have three pumpkins and all are growing fairly well. All three gain from one to two inches of girth a day. The biggest one is just over 100 pounds now by rough calculations. Check out the picture below.

DISASTER HAS STRUCK!!!

We had a major storm blow through here today. dumped lots of rain and hail. We had whats refered to as Marble sized hail. That is hail between 3/4 inch and 1 inch in diameter. Now most of my leaves on my pumpkin vines look like someone walked around with a hole punch and proceeded to puncture just about every leave on the vines. I have no idea if the plants will survive this or not. The pumpkins themselves seemed to survive ok. Probably because of their thick skins. I didnt see any punctures on them at all. I'm praying now that there is enough left of the leaves to keep them growing. At last measure, the largest pumpkin was over 77" in girth and starting to turn the customary orange. I'm estimating the weight to be someplace near 120 pounds right now.

well, we've had a few days of gentle rain and relativly good growing conditions but I'm afraid that the damage the hail did and nearing the end of the growing season has taken it's toll. My biggest pumpkin has only made it to 77" in girth and about 120 pounds by estimation. ( i'll know more when I pick it and weigh it.) the vines are trying to recover by starting to grow at an enormous rate. I've been trying to make the vines grow back and fouth in the bed but its just not working. I've got vines that are literally growing out of the garden and over the walls. I'm going to leave the fruit onthe vines untill closer to Holloween and let them harden off. At least i'll have the biggest Jack-O-Lantern in the city!

Well, its finally all over. I've cut the pumpkins off the vine and set them out to harden off for Holloween. My firts attempt was dismal to say the least. My biggest was only 118 pounds and the other two were only in the 80 to 90 pound range. But for my first time I think thats ok. Like I've stated before, next year i'm going to start earlier, prepare the soil different ( it was crap soil to start with) and water differently. I dont see any reason I cant get at least in the 800 to 1000 pound range next year.

I'll end this years page now and leave it here for those who might be interested. good look to all you pumpkin growers out there.