Update from Saltspring Island

 Hello again, pumpkin-heads! Here's what's growing on around here:

Planted the four best growers of my seedlings: the Anderson 977, Anderson
815, Anderson 634 and Langevin 963 in my newly-created pumpkin patch of
equal parts topsoil, sand and chicken manure, not to mention weeds (I said
not to mention weeds!). One outstripped all the others by far -- oddly
enough not the one you'd expect, but the Anderson 634! It sprouted first,
grew fastest, strongest and thickest stem, put on more leaves and bigger
ones, etc. than all the others. It's still way ahead now in the pmpkin
patch. Far and away the most sincere pumpkin I have -- Great Pumpkin please
take note!

Second most vigourous WAS the 977, but just before I transplanted them I
discovered a large stem split starting at soil level and continuing up the
stem to the cotyledon leaves. Groan, moan, much gnashing of teeth and
tearing of hair and after considering long and hard (well, two minutes at
least...) should I plant the other 815 even though it wasn't growing as
fast? Should I wait for one of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence Growers'seedlings to
catch up? Well, no, it was seed from the first-prizewinner last year and I
planted it anyway. It was a healed, dry split, not oozing or anything, and
I figured that this plant has the ability to root wherever it's buried, so
I just buried it up to those first leaves, supporting the weight of the
stem and four true leaves on a handy clod of clay. SO far it doesn't seem
to have suffered any setback at all, apart from a slight tendency to
yellowing in the stem and first two true leaves. We'll see what we see.

Incidentally, I discovered a transplanting fertilizer that has Butylolic
acid in it (or something like that) that encourages rootlets to form and so
far seems to have made transplant shock non-existent in all my plants,
squash, tomatoes and pumpkins included. You water the soil in the hole in
which you're transplanting and also water the plant in with it, and they
just start leaping out of the ground immediately. A great investment, one
bottle makes gallons of watering fluid, too I recommend it highly. My
pumpkins were all in 2-gallon black plastic pots, and I cut away the pots
when transplanting to minimize soil disturbance and gently set them into
their holes.

I still had five plants left and a packet of Howard Dill seeds, and no more
room to plant any, and couldn't stand to let those excellent genetics go to
waste, so I placed an ad in the local paper offering Giant Pumpkin plants
free to serious growers. I'm going to sponsor cash prizes and a trophy at
this year's Fall Fair for the largest. Gave away two yesterday, to the guy
who runs the Ganges Sewer plant. He plans to grow one at home on his
(son's) vegetable garden and one on treated sewage sludge! He took the
Lloyd 900+ and the Geerts 741.5, me trailing after them and gabbling
instructions about transplant shock avoidance and stem burying techniques
as he got into his van and drove my darlings away. It was like giving up a
child for adoption! Oddly, I haven't had any other calls. 

I'll keep the group posted about the Fall Fair competition, which will be
open to anyone. I'm hoping to be able to have a $500 first prize, if the
local newspaper publisher can be talked into matching my funds. He's the
one whose "giant squash" beat my "Connecticut Giant Pumpkin" at last year's
fair, when the Stupid Judge declared my pumpkin to be a squash because it
didn't have the "five-point stem to fruit interface" that he insisted was
the sign of a true pumpkin. Humph!

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