Disaster happens

The wet weather we have been experiencing has done its worst and we have lost one of our giant pumpkins. We do not appear to be alone. The Paton boys have lost 4 of their 6 giants.
Our remaining giant is not looking too good either, there is signs of rotting at one end. We need sunshine, urgently.

Pumpkin Update

As I said last week I thought it would be fun to just see how fast the mother of all pumpkins is growing so we started to measure its circumference. So far we have recorded the following measurements:
15th 67cm
17th 70cm
19th 76cm
It is incredible the rate of growth in just six days.
Julian is ensuring each day he cuts off any flowers that are forming to put all the energy into the main fruit, along with feeding it at least twice a week nature is doing the rest.

Update from Chris Packham

'The behemoth liveth ! Look at my triffid ! I know its just the start , just a few leaves , but it seems to be prospering under my loving care . Whatever , my confidence is currently high . I wonder how long it will be before its visable from space ? '




'Here it is - the first picture of my baby monster . I now know how a proud parent feels with one of those scans ! I fertilized it two days ago using pollen from the male flower and I reckon its begining to swell already . And if one of the badgers that visit my garden even looks at it . . .

Chris Packhams Giant Pumpkin

I received this e-mail from Chris today who is really getting excited about our pumpkin challenge and he has every right to be excited it is a real whopper:
Chris Packham says:

" I was worried to start with as there seemed little progress from my seedling . . . but now its off to a flying start . Ive been pretty fastidious with the watering and giving it a little root food to get it started . I feed my Badgers about 2 metres away from where its planted and Im begining to wonder if this was such a good idea given their very cosmopolitan diet ! We shall see . Theres still a long way to go but my confidence is growing as fast as my potential giant ! "

Chris

How is yours growing? let us know by adding to this post.

How big is your Pumpkin ?

After a weeks growing we feel our pumpkins are getting established. We lavished plenty of water onto them over the last week even though there has been a threat of rain, unfortunately the rain we received did not really get well into the soil so Julian has been giving these a good soaking each day. How are yours getting on?

Giant Pumpkins

It would appear our Giant Pumpkin competition is really getting going, we have sold quite a few over the weekend in the Garden Centre.
Having only just planted ours out in the Learning Garden last week we are making sure they do not get any checks at the moment so we are applying plenty of water so they do not dry out while they are making their roots.

Pumkins are go

We are planting out all our pumpkins and gourds today (11th June 2008) including one of our special Giant Pumpkins. Remember we have posted a fact sheet on how to grow pumpkins on our site at Fact sheets here we are giving away some of the trade secrets on how to achieve a whopper.