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Re: Novice actually gets something!

it's those lemon yellow golf balls that you have to pollinate now. Each one
has a flower at its top end, right? find a male flower that has just opened
(one of the ones on those long, erect, arching, up-thrusting green stems...
hmmm, I'm seeing a parallel here) and tear off its foreskin... ooops, I
mean flower petals. Inside, in the center, will be the stamen, the actual
business-end of the pollinating system. I think I will leave off with the
metaphor, now.... Anyway, gently spread the luscious petals of the flower
at the end of your yellow golf ball and dab, dab, dab that stamen all over
the stamens in the center of the female flower. She's preggers now, boyo!
Water well, throw some dirt and manure over the vine, mulch with straw to
keep it damp and stand back! Exploding pumpkins!

----------
> From: Tom Perigrin <tip@ai.chem.ohiou.edu>
> To: pumpkins@athenet.net
> Subject: Novice actually gets something!
> Date: Sunday, August 03, 1997 6:07 AM
> 
> 
> 
> I have never grown giant pumpkins before. Heck, my wife is the gardener,
> and my gardening experience mostly consists of  "honeydos".  "Honey do
> this",  "honey do that".
> 
> Okay, add to that my late start.  I got my seeds from a friend who reads
> this list (Hi DGS of Termite Manor in Menlo Park!) just as I was leaving
> for a conference, and by the time I got around to germinating them, a
fewof
> you guys were talking about blossoms.  I contacted a pumpkin grower in my
> local who said "Ah, you'll probably have enough growing season".
> 
> THEN, this list can be daunting.  Every day this list is filled with
> stories of woe and disaster... borers, rot, blight, plague, famine, death
> and war (I consider the phone company tryin to rip up the vines to be the
> vegitable equivalent of war).   Each day I went out to check my vines I
> expected to see naught but a little mound of green curcurbit mulch, and
fat
> insects, bacteria, or whatever.
> 
> But, I planted them, watered them, added a little fertilizer now and
then.
> At first they grew very sluggishly.  In fact, the tops of vines on 2 out
> of 3 of them split open!     But eventually the joint beyond the split
> threw down roots, and the thing started growing at an audible rate.
> 
> Then I began to dispair of pumpkin parenthood.   From the notes on this
> list it seemed like these things were incapable of breeding on their own.
> I envisaged haviing to buy little pumpkin pumps and stockings from
> Victorias Garden Secrets, to entice the apparently shy and lazy male
> flowers to do the pollination thing with the equally shy and virginal
> female flowers.   I went out into my patch, laid on the ground and tried
to
> fathom the intricies of pumkin sex.  I peered at the plantly sexy bits.
> They resembled, in NO way, the pictures I had spend hours perusing when I
> was a young lad.   Was this a girl flower?  Is that a boy flower?
> 
> Dammit, I'm a chemist, Jim, not a botanist.  (the star trek fans will
> recognize the original)
> 
> And now, I have 2 little baby pumpkins.  Okay, they aren't 80" OTT, or
100
> pounds.  In fact, they are cute little lemon yellow golf balls.  But now
I
> am beginning to have hope.
> 
> Oh dear, isn't that when everything goes really wrong. When the stucker
> starts to hope?
>
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