Godfrey de Pumpkin

I planted pumpkins back in May. I think it was Memorial day weekend that they went in the ground. I saved the seeds from our Halloween pumpkins last fall with the intent of growing my own pumpkins. Andy thought this was a great idea, but he promptly forgot about it around November 1.

Andy's scary face pumpkin is on the left, my Chi Square Distribution Pumpkin is on the right.

I read everything that I could find on growing pumpkins and was met with a variety of information, including
a.) they are incredibly easy to grow, even for beginner gardeners
2.) they are incredibly difficult to grow, even for experienced gardeners
III.) conditions must be perfect and a first year plot might be lacking the proper nutrients, soil, and bee population to sustain a fruitful pumpkin patch

Undeterred by what I read, I started my pumpkins from my seeds in the middle of May. I had them in small flower pots and used standard potting soil – I had no clue if they were even going to grow in this medium. I was quite surprised when two weeks later I had little pumpkin seedlings. This meant I could move on to step 2 – planting the garden.

That was no easy task, since we didn’t have an actual plot of viable dirt for planting. I selected an area of the backyard that was on an upward slope and covered in weeds and decided that This Is The Place. I then attacked it with an axe since we don’t have a rototiller or any other ground plowing device, and I eventually turned that plot of weeds into dirt. I added in three 40lb bags of manure and tilled and mixed and planted my precious seedlings.

garden

seedlings

I half expected the seedlings to wither and die once in the ground, but they slowly started growing more leaves and by mid July they were quite plentiful with the leaves. Actual flowers showed up at the end of July.

Alpha Pumpkin in the left foreground

Flowers! (on the alpha pumpkin)

I was worried that we would not have any bees visiting our flower, and pumpkins need bees to pollinate (they have both male and female flowers on each vine and bees are necessary to get the job done). I was delighted when I went to out check our newly opened flowers and saw 6 or 7 honey bees and a few bumblebees happily buzzing around. This has continued daily for the past 2 weeks.

Our first two weeks of flowers has been fairly uneventful, as my plants have yielded many many male flowers, but no female flowers. Actually, one plant has had a female flower. This one plant has been ahead of the rest in terms of growth rate since the beginning. Not sure why as it has no distinct advantage over the others…it just seems more robust. That plant has given us our only female flower to date. I was worried that it might not get pollinated, but within a few days a small pumpkin was growing on the vine. Two weeks later I decided to name this pumpkin. Until now we just referred to that plant as the Alpha Pumpkin, but now that there was an actual pumpkin on the vine, I decided we needed to name it. I told Andy to think of a name.

And we named it Godfrey. Here he is, just under two weeks old:

Godfrey de Pumpkin

Here’s a pic of Godfrey and my hand for size reference:

Godfrey - bigger than my fist