Re: First year reflections
Dan,
Thanks for you list on what you learned the first year. I too am a first year growing even though mine was a disaster! I will use your list as a guide for next year!
Shelley
<<< "Dan & Katja" <lorax2@geocities.com> 8/20 8:50a >>>
OK, based on the season so far here is my łTop 15˛ list of things I have
learned this year. Yes, some of them are common sense now. But they
werenąt 4 months ago for me. I hope you find them of interest. In case you
are curious I have my perfectly shaped 140 lb pumpkin sitting out in the
patch. No record breaker I know, but quite a nice Halloween pumpkin for my
first try. (Assuming my luck doesnąt run out of course....) In regards to
the following, remember, I'm no expert. This was all just picked up through
reading or try and error.
Thoughts on my first season:
1) Start earlier next year! A May 28th germination is too late. Though my
plant was robust from the start and faced no damaging frost. It also went
almost directly outside.
2) Use the biggest peat pots I can find. Enough said.
3) Donąt buy generic seeds from a catalog, there are tons of great people
willing to share seed that has a proven family tree and needs to be tested
for its genetic potential.
4) Vine bury more aggressively, especially the first 6 feet or so of
primary vine and get a good root system well anchored. Also, a dab of
rooting hormone didnąt seem to hurt any.
5) Make a fertilization schedule and follow it in order to augment the
plants phases through the season.
6) Read Don Langevinąs 2nd book - twice.
7) Get a material under the pumpkin early on. The jury is still out on the
result I got using bubble wrap this year... no problems yet.
8) Adjust the position of the pumpkin when it is HOT. Above 90 degrees F
it becomes surprisingly easy.
9) To kill vine borers: Find the infected area. Take a long pin and stab
it through the vine repeatedly from various directions. This seemed to kill
them, and seemed to do less damage than I tended to do with a knife.
Afterwards I treated the stems with concentrated seaweed solution and buried
them with composted manure. I set a pumpkin on a vine that I did this too.
I had almost cut the vine it was wilting so badly at one point before the
surgery.
10) Newspaper with a layer of straw on top does not make a half bad mulch.
Itąs cheap, and seemed to keep 95% of the weeds down. Also, the pumpkin can
fire roots down right through it.
11) Not sure what to do about pesticides. I didnąt use anything and only
had a touch of SVB. The thing I noticed was an abundance of birds, frogs
and snakes around my patch. Maybe they wouldnąt have been around if I had
nuked all the little pests. Are they the reason I had so few bugs? Or was
it just that the bugs weren't lying in wait in my first year patch.
12) Having a pack of wild coyotes around beats the best of woodchuck
traps.....
13) These plants are tougher than they seem at times. Cut vines tossed to
the side frequently keep growing and often have male blossoms after being
cut. Not sure this has any practical value, but it was a sight to see.
14) There are some really awesome pumpkin webpages online. Also, there IS
a pumpkin FAQ out there. http://www.backyardgardener.com/faq.html Some of
you may have mentioned it. And yes, it does have many of the answer to our
most frequent questions.....
CAUTION: This is where my reflections on pumpkins ends and my reflections
on listserves begin. If you are tired of hearing about this issue, STOP
HERE!
15) Being a longtime listserve veteran, (on lists other than this one, I am
a freshman here) listserves go through phases, it is a fact of life. Any
listserve that a group of people actually use inevitable annoy some of its
population periodically. This is how I met my wife. But that is another
story that has nothing to do with pumpkins, people will have to let me know
if they want to hear that tale.
You have a multitude of choices if you find yourself getting annoyed:
*Delete lots of messages without reading them for awhile. Especially ones
title,
łRe: RE: re: Re: Problems with this list.˛
*Filter individuals who annoy you.
*Sign off temporarily and give the list a little time to regain its
composure.
*If it is just too many messages, good, bad and otherwise: subscribe to
digest for awhile.
* If you really donąt want any e-mail, for this list you can just dig
through the archives periodically.
*Privately e-mail people who you think are doing something inappropriate.
Or ask the list owner to speak with them. This is much more civilized than
flaming them on the list.
*Publicly flaming people on the list is just bad Karma, donąt do it......
*Never say anything on a list that you wouldnąt say to a personąs face,
loudly and in a large room of people. I think we sometimes forget that
people on e-mail have feelings.
*Come up with such an exciting new topic that people forget about what they
were annoyed about in the first place.
The 2 options that should be used only as last resorts:
*Sign off permanently: Donąt do it! Weąd miss you.
*Make a post to the list complaining about all of the annoying posts.
Guaranteed to make the problem worse before it gets better.
Thanks for reading my big post --Dan
--
Katja Hrones & Dan Butterworth
96 Oregon Road
Ashland, MA 01721
lorax2@geocities.com
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