As you can see from the photo above, my pumpkin vine was soon to be squished. I made sure the pumpkin would not grow over the blossom end so I angled the pumpkin slightly towards the stem end. I have never done this before, but you don’t know until you try. I learned some very valuable lessons about what you can do while moving a pumpkin and what you can’t do. I also learned that you should use a carpenter’s level and make sure to have a 4ft by 4ft area hard packed and level for the pumpkin to grow on once the fruit has been pollinated.
Anyway, I am a firm believer in taking chances and hopefully learning from your mistakes. This was definitely a mistake and probably the result of me being too excited. Here goes the story……..….As I mentioned above, I saw that the vine had way too much pressure on it and if I didn’t do something soon, would probably fix itself and I was going to lose my growth rate.
This was a personal best and weighing in at 800+ pounds at around day 50. I figured all I need to do is move the pumpkin 5 inches. I thought through all sorts of possible options. Initially, I thought about using my tripod setup, but that would wreak havoc on some of the vines and root system of the pumpkin. I then wondered about hooking up the ATV or truck and just trying to drag it. I then decided to create an elaborate pully system to slowly inch it along a 1/4 inch at a time. After I had everything hooked up and the straps adjusted to pull the correct angles that I wanted, I had my son start ratcheting away. I squeezed myself next to the pumpkin and the vines as he pulled the pumpkin back. The system I had rigged up was working great! It was extending the vine out just like I had imagined. He pulled it the 5 inches and I was ecstatic. We looked everything over and I decided I needed 1/2 inch more to take the final kink out of the vine and it would be a straight feed through the stem to the pumpkin. I was so excited, I crawled on the pumpkin so I could get a bird’s eye view of the stem and main vine. Why in the world would I get my heavy body ontop of the pumpkin you ask? This makes no sense and probably would guarantee a split, but all common sense went out the door from my excitement. I asked Alex to ratchet it twice and on the second ratchet, we heard a hollow poof sound. Hmmmm……I wonder what that could be. My heart sank and I quickly unhooked everything and lifted the blankets to see. To my dismay, I cracked the blossom end.
Even the blossom end of the pumpkin was 5 to 6 inches. Most of the pumpkin was between 12 to over 18 inches thick on the walls(http://www.facebook.com/pumpkinfanatics). This was by far the thickest pumpkin that I had grown and I’m estimating would have gone heavy to the chart. Just a guess, but it was probably closer to 900+ pounds, but it could have been even higher than that.
The tough thing about this hobby is you have to wait another year before you make the corrections you learned from the current season. I have not had time to grow seriously the past two years so I was looking forward to my results of this year. This plant survived hail storms (my hail netting now as holes in it), 60 mph sustained winds and we only had one night that stayed in the 60s this summer. It was going to be a brilliant orange and was already over 5 feet wide. I have no one to blame but myself and hopefully I’ll learn from this mistake. It sure has been fun watching it grow this summer! I’ll start the winter rye grass once I’m back from Kansas City.