RE: South African grower.
> What would cause it to stop growing and start to ripen
> too early as happened to our previous "champ"?
This is a great question. I don't know everything but ethylene
gas causes fruit to ripen. Just a week or so ago on the
bigpumpkins.com site there was an excellent discussion on
this. The theory being that older roots begin to break down
with age, and in the process produce ethylene. The idea is
then to sever the pumpkin's main vine from the stump late in
the year. By this time the vine has plenty of roots to keep it
going, and we cut ties to the oldest roots to avoid the
ethylene hit. This is an idea, not a proven fact.
Who knows? But it's fun learning.
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