pumpkin status and a question or two

My goal for planting pumpkins this year was to try a few different varieties and also to get a feel for what I should and should not do next year when I plan to grow them for size.
So far, the plants that have fared the best are the least "hybrid" - the cheap $2 pack at Ace Hardware are doing well and the Burpee Big Max plants are doing extremely well.
The Burpee Prizewinner Hybrid isn't doing so well. All of the prizewinner hybrid plants have developed some sort of weird yellowish rot-looking stuff at the base of the plant right before it goes into the ground. They're alive, the leaves are large and full, but the base of the plant is bizarre looking to say the least.
The burpee Big Max plants are by far making the largest leaves and most number of leaves. Keep in mind I planted these plants mid June so there's no vines to speak of and the flowers have not come out yet. The big max leaves are around a foot wide...
The Ace Hardware (New England seed co.) plants put out a few blooms last week (they were planted June 1) but have been eaten by the groundhogs. The two plants that have survived have a vine along the ground that is about 3 feet long and leaves that are around 6-8 inches in diameter.
The Boston area has had a lot of rain lately - in the past week we have had 7 inches of rain. Prior to the rain I had been watering the plants with 1 gallon of water each with miracle gro fertilizer (the house plant type, 10-13-6 fertilizer or something like that). The fertilizer worked wonders for rate of growth, size of leaves and color. They turned a dark green once I started putting the fertilizer to them.
Last weekend I put down some grubex all over the yard with a double pass along the places where the plants are. No ill effects. I sprayed some plants with a mixture of malathion and bifenthrin and it burned the leaves badly - I don't know if the malathion or bifenthrin caused this but either way I won't be spraying the leaves with either of these until I know which one not to put on the leaves (opinions, anyone?). The imidacloprid does not seem to have had any effect on any of them because the strongest plants with biggest/largest/best- looking leaves had more grubex pellets than the others.
As a quirky side note, the plants that have really done the best are the ones I put into the yard by digging up a patch of grass and poking seeds into the ground. The plants that haven't really done so well were the ones I carefully planted with new soil from different soil/ dirt companies. Next year I think i'll just rent a tiller and till the soil to make a patch instead of buying a bunch of dirt.
The groundhog situation here is pretty harsh - rabbits galore also. I think next year i'll buy some 2x6 boards cut to length and use door hinges to hold them together to form a big rectangle, and then put fencing mounts on the boards. I suspect the groundhogs would burrow under the 2x6 boards and come up the other side though. 


thanks,
jason in boxboro, ma

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