What To Do When Your Giant Pumpkin Blows Up

Since the 1421 has got a hole in it I'm going to use this time to do some experimenting on it.  I want to keep the pumpkin solid but I also want to see how big I can get this thing.  Over the next 5 weeks I'm going to play around with the amount of water and fertilizer I'm going to give the plant.  In the past September weight gains haven't been great.  I'm going to see if giving the plants a touch more fertilizer can help with the gains.  Note that I say a touch.  I know that if you give a plant too much fertilizer, too fast you can actually slow the growth of the pumpkin down.  If you give the plant too much fertilizer too fast you can also split the pumpkin open.  The later I don't have to worry about so I'm going to some experiments to see if I can find a sweet spot for future years.

The morning I gave the plants a foliar multimineral.  This evening I gave the 1421 three ounces of Fish & Seaweed with an added tablespoon of seaweed.  The 1775 I gave three ounces of 0-1-1.

I've got some females that should be opening up in the next 2-5 days on the 1421 that I will try to pollinate with the 2009 clone and/or the Ford plant.  Those would be some excellent crosses.  My son's 335 plant has a very nice pumpkin on it.  I can tell he is really proud of it.  We are going to try to pollinate a female on it again with either the 2009 clone or my 1421.  That would be an excellent cross as well.  These will just be seed pumpkins.