Rain, Rain Go Away

I have to admit I enjoy this rainy, cool weather this time of year but I fear for those growers who have big pumpkins growing.  We've had 3 inches of rain in the last 24 hours and a day or two after this kind of rain you can find a lot of splits.  Good luck to everyone whose pumpkins haven't split.

I went out and covered all of the pumpkins with tarps, dried them as well as I could and emptied the bird bath on the 1421 pumpkin.  I've added an extra cover for the 1421 to help keep that from happening. Even with a tarp that pumpkin had a half inch of water sitting in it.  We had an inch of rain with high winds yesterday for about 20 minutes that had some hail in it. 

 I also sprayed a 10% solution of bleach on the pumpkins.  I was seeing a lot of oozing on the 1775 pumpkins in the rib cracks so I cleaned that out as good as I could and bleached them a little extra.  I'll have to watch that pumpkin carefully but I think the standing water in the ribs is what was causing the oozing.