Re: Seeds.. Not for 2001
Negotiating for real estate is a dead give away you are hooked !
Not bad considering all the problem you have encountered. Start saving your
pennies. There will lots of "wants" on your wish list.
Soil amendments, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, pvc pipe, sprinkler
heads, tarps, shade covers, lumber, spot light for working at night, mosquito
repellent to name a few.
Welcome to the madness.
Good luck next year,
Bob T.
Randall wrote:
> 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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