Seeds.. Not for 2001
Hi List-
I have been reading with interest the thread on selling/free seeds.
Being a real first year newbie WRT growing AG's, the thought of blowing a
single seed that someone might donate to me is something that I do not want
to take a chance with. I will be trying again next year with a package of 5+
seeds that I bought last spring from Mr. Dill and will be buying again next
spring. That way I would not feel bad if something goes haywire. :)) That
ought to give this newbies view on the selling/free seeds controversy.
For those that are interested, I will try to give a short version of my
first years attempt that mother nature has being trying to bring to an end
ever since I transplanted my seedlings to the patch in mid June. I live at
the 55th parallel, in Northern Alberta. Canada.
All the seeds germinated, 7 of them. I gave 3 away and kept 4. I planned
on only planting 2 and giving the remaining 2 away. One week later after
transplanting we got a surprise frost. Lost my two seedlings. I had to
resort to my backups. They managed to survive.
I did not even know what a male or female flower looked like. I spent
hours on the Internet and soon had an idea of what to look for. My patch was
/ is 6'x12' at the edge of our garden. I have since negotiated for more
real-estate from my better half for next year :)
About the 20th July the two plants started flowering. one day male and
next day female etc. Finally resorted to manually pollinating and had
success with 7 out of 7 between my two plants. All fruit that set was no
further than 6 feet from the stump of both plants. 6 fruit were culled over
the next 4 weeks and one of the two plants was removed. Remember my patch
size, I even had to cut the ends of the runners so as not to interfere with
the beans and potatoes. :))
Between setting the fruit we had hail that tore holes in my leaves and
bruised my remaining pumpkin. We have had rain of 3 inches in 2 days, frost
3 times, no sun for 10 days and temps that never got over 65 F for 2 weeks.
It's a wonder that anything grew.
I have had to cover the patch ever night for the last two weeks to
survive the frost. I have lost 20 percent of the leaves to frost and the
remainder have holes from hail.
I do not have the correct fertilizer, I have been using 15-30-15
Miracle-Grow. Next year I will have the correct ones.
Regardless of all the hiccups my pumpkin is still trying to grow, it is
112 lbs as of this morning. using the 3 measurement scheme. It gains about 2
lbs per day. I have seen 8 lbs in one day but that was at the end of a 3 day
stretch of sun.
This list has been very valuable. I can't even try to recount the things
that I have learnt. I hope you folks got a few chuckles from my trials and
tribulations.
-Randall
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