Slow & Steady Wins the Race

I have to do everything I can right now to not go out and pour a bunch of fertilizer on my plants.  We are in the big growth zone right now and we aren't seeing the kind of growth that I would like on the pumpkins.  Both plants grew like weeds over the last two weeks, but the pumpkins aren't putting on incredible inches right now.

I have to remind myself that slow and steady wins the race.  Like I said before, there are different kinds of pumpkins and the ones I'm growing this year tend to be more of the long growing, no big gains but constant gain types.  Trouble is that at this point of the season you don't know if you have a long growing type that is going to go heavy (meaning it will be a thicker pumpkin) or if the pumpkins are just not going to grow well this year.

Last year's pumpkin set a bad precedent for me.  That pumpkin was a rocket out of the gate.  It turned out to be a balloon at the end of the season but it sure was fun to watch grow.  At mid-season it was the second biggest pumpkin, in terms of measurements, at the time of the patch tour ever recorded in Colorado and it was still growing very well at that point.  This years pumpkins aren't that way.  What counts is were the pumpkin is at come way off time however and ultimately what the scale says is the truth.

So at this point of the season if your pumpkin isn't as big as you like or as big as your friend's don't fret it.  Do your best and that is all that you can do.

This evening I spent a lot of time burying vines.  Like I said, the vines grew a lot this last week and I had some catchup to do.  Right now my 1791 plant is almost exactly the size my 1421 plant was at the beginning of September.  I've terminated a lot of vines this week as the plant has filled its space.  By the end of July the 1791 will have filled up all of its available space before the pumpkin.  After the pumpkin the plant isn't growing as fast since the pumpkin is sucking up most of the energy right now.

The 335 plant should have filled in all of its available space before the pumpkin in the next two weeks.