Pumpkin Plants in the Ground and Snow on the Hoop Houses

Yesterday evening I put my new pumpkin plants in the ground to replace the ones that were damaged/dead. In the first hoop house I put my 868 Johnson (1161 Rodonis x 1544 Revier) plant (kids were going to grow this one but they liked the look of the 1084 Grande (1385 Jutras x 901 Hunt) better because it was bigger). The 868 plant has a great dark green color and looks just like my 1161 plant from last year but thicker. The second plant in the hoop house is the 1306 Mohr (1161 Rodonis x 1288 Wallace). This poor plant hasn't grown much at all since the hoop house got blown to Kansas. It must have been damaged some because it just has not seemed happy since then. I still have hopes for it.

In the second hoop house I've put the 1308 Todd (50 Todd x 901 Hunt). This was a plant that I was seriously considering planting at the beginning of the season. The plant that Barry gave me is a very nice looking one with a very thick stump on it. This plant is very intriguing because Barry didn't start the seed that grew the 1308 until the end of the first week of May because he wasn't even planning on growing last year. He still had a pollination about the same time as the other main growers in Colorado and the pumpkin grew right until picking the 2nd week of May. The 901 Hunt that was crossed into that pumpkin went 26% heavy last year and thumped like cement. I'm hoping the aggressiveness of the 50 Todd with the heavy of the 901 will produce a pumpkin that will fix some of the problems I had last year.

In with the 1308 Todd is the 1204 Scherber (1421 Stelts x 1725 Harp). My good 1204 was frost bitten unfortunatley and this plant was slow from the start but it started to take off this last week so I have hopes for it. It had a very nice root system on it when I pulled it out of the pot. I love this cross and would love to put Joe's 1725 clone into it.

In about two weeks I'm going to have to decide which plants to go with. I'll look at the color, growth, and overall health of the plants when I make my decisions.

With the cold weather and snow today in Denver I've got the space heather going in one hoop house and in the other hoop house I have the heat lamp and a 75 watt bulb. All of the plants looked really happy this morning which was good.