Re: pumpkins DIGEST V1 #329

Hi, folks, here's the text of my recent letter to Chris Anderson, who asked
how my pumpkins (his seeds) are doing:

Well, mine are doing swell, I have one giant baby on the 815 which is
currently measuring 186 OTT which my Stellpflug chart says means its 144
lbs! That's so great, and it's still growing great guns, putting on 5-6
inches a day. The 977 outgrew its yellow leaves, you can barely see them at
the centre of the plant, and no problem from the split stem back when I
transplanted it, either. But last week I noticed a whole bunch of wilted
leaves at the terminal end of the main vine and the two nearest secondaries
and when I pulled away the earth on the vine the leaves fell off in my
hands -- they had rotted at the base of each leaf stem where it joined the
vine. I looked in Don Langevin's book and the closest description was
bacterial wilt, which he said was fatal and uncurable and to pull the whole
plant. Well, I just chopped off the main stem and pulled off all the
affected leaves and buried the involved vines deeper and watered and the
plant has bounced right back. All the rest of the vines are still fine, no
sign of wilt and the leaves and coming back on the vines big and green. And
it has just set the most perfectly round and fastest growing pumpkin in the
whole patch. I have great hopes for it. 

[I'd like to make a pitch at this point for not spraying pumpkin patches
with toxic insecticides and Captan, etc. All the damage on my plants has
been healed by piling dirt up around the split, broken or cut-off stems.
Good soil with lots of manure and phosphate rock and greensand and dolomite
lime has taken care of any problems, the worst of which in my case has been
slugs, which I hand pick or dunk in salt water or just chop in half with my
clippers at sundown. I think if more growers just relaxed and let nature
take its course that most problems will take care of themselves. And we
wouldn't have toxic-saturated soils and dead wildlife to account for in the
process. All my pumpkins are growing completely organically. For me, the
hugest pumpkin ever grown in the history of the sport is not worth killing
one garter snake that ingests a sick slug full of metaldehyde, and the
raven that eats the sick snake, and the bald eagle that eats the sick
raven.... ad infinitum.]

The 634 has two large pumpkins on it, but they are long and flat, compared
to the nice high round one on the 815. I don't think they are going to be
my prizewinners, but you never know. I've got a shade cover over the 815's
biggie, and today I'm going to go cover the new one on the 977, çasue I
have a strong feeling that it might be THE ONE! If only the weather stays
as hot and good as it has been and it grows fast enough to make up for the
fact that it set relatively late in the seaon.

How are yours doing?

Denise McCann Beck / Earth Island Organics
USDA Zone 7
Sunset Western 4
Coastal Bristish Columbia

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