Giant Pumpkin Seeds for 2013

I am definitely behind on keeping this web site current and keeping everyone informed on how my season is progressing.  Due to other factors, I have not had too much time to spend growing pumpkins.  I had selected the seeds that I planned to grow for 2013 fairly early in the season.  I am always trying to grow the largest and brightest color of orange pumpkin possible.  You will also notice that I am growing genetics from some of the pumpkins that weighed heavy.  Hopefully, I will not experience my pumpkins weighing light this year.  Especially since I had several weigh light last year.  I also thought it would be nice to try and grow my own seed this year.

The season definitely started off to a rough start.  My hail netting blew down multiple times.  I had steel conduit snap this year and decided to secure 2X4 in concrete to have them be ripped out of the ground as well.  Early on, we had two weeks with sustained 35 mph winds gusting to 60mph.  A portion of my garden was destroyed by hail and my wife and I have counted hail on five separate occasions.  In late May, the 660 Corbin experienced frost, even while living in the greenhouse.  I had not realized that my lamp in the hoop house had burned out and all the leaves were frozen.  Just to show you how tough pumpkins are, I stayed with the plant and it regenerated new leaves.  It does not look like a healthy plant, but I set a pumpkin on it today at around 8ft out.  I am using a secondary as the main and will use this as an experiment to see how large they can get after losing all of their leaves to frost early on.

I started all my pumpkins late this year or April 22nd.  I was able to pollinate some on June 30th, but I will probably hold out for the ones that I pollinated today since they are further out.  I’ll show pictures of each plant on separate posts.