Milk Feeding

---

• To: <p*@athenet.net>
• Subject: Milk Feeding
• From: v*@postoffice.utas.edu.au (Vanessa Marsden)
• Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 15:56:10 +1100

Ok, so noone believes in milk feeding. *huh*

Taken from "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1933. (Btw, this is
midsummer in New York State)

...how to raise a milk fed pumpkin. The had picked out the best vine in the
field and snipped off all the braches but one. then between the root and
the wee green pumpkin they carefully made a little slit on the underside of
a vine. Under the alit Almanzo made a hollow in the ground and set a bowl
of milk in it. The he put a candle wick in the bowl and the end of the
candle wick he put carefully in the slit.
Every day the pumpkin vine drank up the bowlful of milk, through the candle
wick, and the pumpkin was growing enormously. Already it was 3 times as big
as any other pumpkin in the field.

And this 10 year old's pumpkin goes on to win the flavour And size section
of the local country fair. This is a historical account. As I already said,
I began a sucrose-feeding regime on a Jarrahdale last year with success
until other factors killed the pumpkin. The slit is only quite small-ie the
width of the piece of string. For the vine to be killed, it really has to
be pretty much ring barked.

vanessa.

  _--|\
/        \              Vanessa S. Marsden
\.--._/
      \*<------- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.   

• Prev by Date: Final word on milk feeding
• Next by Date: stem split
• Prev by thread: Final word on milk feeding
• Next by thread: Re: Milk Feeding