South African update

Hi and sympathies to all those mourning the loss of their loved ones
such as John Sargeant in NZ (where they don't know how to prepare a test
wicket!) and also to those who are anticipating the imminent birth of
new loved ones in the Northern hemisphere! 
We have six children on the vines at the moment and it occurred to me
that I owe the list some news so here goes...
We haven't been very imaginative in naming the pumpkins - they are A, B,
C, D, E and F. If any of them show signs of getting to a decent size we
may bless them with real names. A, B and C which grew on plants from
Howard Dill seed have all stopped growing at around the 140 - 160 lb
mark. Admittedly we have had the hottest summer in 40 years - temps have
been in the mid 30's every day for weeks and we haven't had a drop of
rain in a month. But... the Dill plants have suffered far more from the
heat than the others which all came from seed very kindly donated by
Mike in Oregon. The Dill's stopped producing leaves a while ago and
those on the plants have wilted and died off, so I guess they have a
good excuse for not growing any more! 
The other three pumpkins are another story - they still have lush
foliage and are still gaining slowly which is probably due to the
incredible heat we've been experiencing. We've given up hope of growing
any world beaters but it looks like we've beaten our PB which is about
120lbs by a long way. I'll post the OTT measurements on Monday.
A lesson learned - we planted each pair of seedlings on a mound of cow
manure and compost and had most of them uprooted by birds looking for
grubs in amongst the cow poop. We had to replant some of the poor things
a few times and this probably contributed significantly to their lack of
development. The later plantings weren't affected as badly which may
have been because the poop had enough time to bake and decompose a bit
more and didn't contain so many larvae. Next year we'll put the manure
in earlier and also probably won't bother with the mounds either. They
wash away in heavy rain and expose the roots and are generally a pain in
the arse to maintain. I'm not convinced that there is any real benefit
to be derived from them and we'll try the basin approach instead. For us
it has the added advantage of retaining water around the root area when
the plants are young and vulnerable. With our luck it'll probably flood
next summer and we'll end up drowning the poor things instead! 
I'm sending some photos to George Webster for inclusion in his next
video, so you'll get a chance to see what Buster and I look like and
also what our pumpkins are like.
Cheers
Sue in HOT, HOT DRY sunny SA
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