It's Like Christmas in August, Baby!

I've been doing the measurements on the pumpkins by myself this season. My wife is supportive of my hobby but so supportive to actually do more than ask how much the pumpkin grew that day. And that is okay. The pumpkins for the last week have been big enough that they are getting hard to measure. Especially the 1236 because it has ribs that don't follow the circumference lines so finding the right line and keeping the tape from slipping is hard.

Today I found out that I have been mis-measuring the 1236 pumpkin. There is a rib below the rib that I've been using for my circumference line that is much wider than what I have been using before. I found an extra two inches today and it was like Christmas morning. Two inches represents about 22 pounds. Its good timing too because the RMGVG patch tour is tomorrow. That is like a girl dropping 22 pounds the day before her class reunion. Great rejoicing!

I like to set growth marks for certain dates and I've been falling behind this week. Cooler temperatures and cloudy afternoons have slowed things down. This extra two inches puts me very close to being right back on track.

The 1161 has problems again (actually they have never gone away). For the third time I've found the stump rotting. A kind of gel is coming out of three spots on the stump. This time it seems a little worse than the last two times. Once again I cleaned out the spots of all the soft stuff but this time I put 100% bleach on the spots rather than diluted bleach. I then put sulfur dusting powered over the whole stump which I rubbed into the stump.

I gave both plants some CO2, magnesium and manganese last night.