Wow, Caroline! That's quite a haul and that's just a sampling :). They are all so beautiful. How much fun to grow! I am hopping for a big yard. Don't care if the house is small as long as it is solid but want that big yard.

Slim, your yard and pumpkins look wonderful! I like your setup, the way the pumpkins can grow on the fence. I'd like to try that. I am at a community garden and thought about using their fence to let the pumpkins grow up it. I think it looks so pretty. Everything is so green. I think my garden is slowing down in some ways. Our weather has been very weird.

I did pick my Baby Blue Hubbard. It weighs just over 3 pounds. I tested all the signs, fingernail check, dull skin color and the vine was changing to brown where it connected. I will be curing it for a few weeks. Here's a pic. It is more blue green but the lighting makes it seem green.

Great updates!

Caroline: quite the haul!!!!

Frogged: Beautiful pumpkin!!!

The deer got to a few of mine--honestly, sometimes I feel just like crying.

another view

There is a wagon load and some in the ranger, and another truck load that I'm keeping for saving seed.

There is a wagon load and some in the ranger, and another truck load that I'm keeping for saving seed.

{{!gwi}}

I'm impressed--makes me want to dig up the lawn and plant pumpkins, but not until I can get a 10 ft fence. :-)

Caroline- that is an insane group of pumpkins. Do you sell them to the locals?

My first Howden is getting bulgy. Hopefully it doesn't get too lopsided like my watermelons did. It is my best hope for Halloween and it has to stand up.

Even though that Howden above is the first pumpkin growing, our "pumpkin patch" did yield this weirdo:

Gosh everyone!!!!
All the pumpkins look wonderful!! can't wait to hear what seeds we all have for swapping, I went out after two days of not looking, we have been inside caring for our sweet pup who had surgery, and i have 4 new knuckelhead pumpkins!!! And a possible two more caspers. That week of rain seems to have energized the late vines. I have until about oct 15 till the first very cold nights and the 31 till we always get out first scift of snow. i hope that they will all bump up for the holiday. last year the late guys ripened and kept in our cool dark basement and i had eating into February.......and boy i have so very many more this year.
My peanuts have not yet started to blister, and i am a bit bummered out i love how ugly they get, and i hear they are such better eatting the more blisters they have.

Caroline what a wonderful haul!!! can you take a pick with name tags?? ha ha...
PG the wierdo looks like a nice one for the oven, stuffed with chilie or stove top....

Frogged is that a dills giant?? look beautiful.. i grew a 60# last year and a late 30# that did not ripen. will try again next year..

hopw you all have a great weekend!!!

slim

OMG Caroline, that is awesome! What an amazing crop - you must be thrilled :D

Really, really amazing. Are you selling them?

So glad to find this forum. Retired a couple of years ago and every year I have expanded what I grow. Used to do a ton of garlic and not much else, but have discovered how much fun winter squash and pumpkin are and grew some for the first time in a long time this year. I grew Hi Jinx which is a hybrid jack o lantern variety. They did great planted on one of my compost heaps. Also grew acorn and thinking I might have taken them too soon. Time will tell.

Amazingly enough, the pumpkin vines have started to put out female flowers after dropping many immature fruits before I harvested the 6 pumpkins (3 on each vine.) Wondering if those fruits will grow and mature in the more than two months we have left until the first hard frost. What do you squash experts think?

Hey Kris,

This was my first year with pumpkins so sadly I'm not the expert you're hoping for ;) but I've got some females after harvesting my mature pumpkins as well. I'm optimistic. Pumpkins grow extremely quickly once they've set. I guess we'll just wait and see!

Hey folks,
I had started some cindarella pumpkins (Rouge Vif D'etampes) back in the end of July. I had them under tulle cover since earlier I had grown acorn squash, round zucchini and had some volunteer pumpkin plants. Since then all that stuff had been pulled out, but I had tons of squash bugs around, and lots of SVB flying around too.
So I had to protect my seedlings if they were to stand a chance. They have grown very quickly, and last week I could hardly keep them contained under the tulle. Plus I think I have killed of most of the squash bugs. So I released them early last week from the tulle cover. I have begun burying vines now, and trying to pick off eggs. Hopefully my plants now are strong enough to withstand some SVB damage... hopefully by late Sept the SVB will start dwindling down. ( here in Texas we have multiple generation unfortunately :( )

Today I noticed the first male flower open. I do see some small female flower starting to form. Keeping my finger crossed for a few nice pumpkins this fall. I have until late November (first average freeze)

Nice looking plant, ccabal! Stephanie, I did put out a sign and pulled my wagon by the highway to sell, but didn't get a whole lot of people. I think it's too hot and people are still in summer mode. Punk, I love your tall skinny weird pumpkin!

Since I didn't get much traffic today, I took some fun pumpkin pictures! Here's the pile of gourds!

Nice looking plant, ccabal! Stephanie, I did put out a sign and pulled my wagon by the highway to sell, but didn't get a whole lot of people. I think it's too hot and people are still in summer mode. Punk, I love your tall skinny weird pumpkin!

Since I didn't get much traffic today, I took some fun pumpkin pictures! Here's the pile of gourds!

{{!gwi}}

And another fun pic!

And a rainbow!

And a rainbow!

{{!gwi}}

Wow Caroline, that is awesome! Love those pictures! Keep them coming. So are you still curing them? Just curious,how much are you selling them for?

Another question... did you have any issues with Squash bugs, or SVB ?

This post was edited by ccabal on Tue, Sep 2, 14 at 12:45

Those are some pretty impressive pics!

ccabal, the squash bugs were terrible! And powdery mildew ultimately killed my patch, so that was bad, too. I never sprayed anything, and basically just did a very hands-off approach. I'm sure the pumpkins could have been better but it's just for fun so I didn't want to spend tons.

As for pricing, I'm selling by size, miniature gourds, small, medium and large pumpkins... 3 gourds for $1, small pumpkins $2 each, medium pumpkins $4 each and large pumpkins $6. Do those prices sound okay? I'm in southern Illinois, so low cost of living area!

Yeah those sound very reasonable. I wish I was closer, I'd stop by and get some!

Me too! If I found your stuff for sale at those prices, I'd consider it the deal of the century!!

I live in a different part of the country but those prices are crazy good. Down here, a good-sized standard orange jack o lantern is about $5, but the specialty varieties you have would be oodles more. Last year one of my kids had his heart set on this huge polar bear pumpkin - cost me $18!

I showed my husband the (beautiful btw) pics of your stuff and told him the prices. Said I was considering a road trip ;D

hi hi caroline!!!!

your pics are wonderful, do you have a pic of your nutterella? and what kind of white"s are yours Polar bear??

slim

Slim, I *think* they're polar bear pumpkins, some are small and some are bigger. I know I saved polar bear seed, but can't remember if I saved other white pumpkin varieties? If I want to get more serious about this next year I'll have to label them! Here's a couple more pictures. I have some mums and corn stalks to add curb appeal, so I'm going to try to sell again this weekend. It's been 90+ degrees here, but tomorrow it's going to be 80 so maybe people will stop.

A lunch lady gourd. I have several of these and I really like them!

I love love love the tan one on the right! Then it looks like a yellow One-Too-Many pumpkin on the left... I think...

A green one-too-many?

The pile!

Do you trim the male flower's,if you have the number of fruit you want on your plant?

Someone got hungry :-(

Oh noooo notolover!! That is very sad! What kind of critter did that? Rabbit? That was such a beautiful pumpkin! What if you pick it and seal the damage with something to preserve it?

Hi LCaroline,

Well, I pretty much wrote this guy off anyway because his "butt" was stuck to the fence and I couldn't move him. The deer were browsing the leaves and I guess the pumpkin was just too much to resist :-)

Then yesterday I was "wrestling" with another one hanging off the dog pen trying to put it into a T shirt hammock and it fell into my arms. I'm hoping that it will color up; it's a pale green right now. It's recooperating in the shade tent with my small cacti.

I hope the deer don't hunt it down. It's sad when you only have a few, but really, I think I do more damage than the critters because I always have to be looking at them or trying to move them. I need a field like yours so I can keep my interference to a minimum :-)

This is our first year to plant pumpkins. We planted hi jinx and jack-o-lanterns. Some plants didn't make it. The ones that did looks great, are blooming, and some have pumps the size of big golf balls. May be a crazy question but is there any way these might be ready in 2-3 weeks? I had told our Master Gardener group that they should be ready by Sept. 30. I don't think there is any way they will. We had 2-3 inches of rain 3 nights ago and they should really come on. What do you think?

Hi carlyg, I think that will be pushing it. I grew the small sugar pumpkin last year and it took 3 weeks from pollination to finish growing. Took another 2-3 weeks to orange up.

Hello,

Don't have time to use a photo site so apologize for multiple posts:

Can anyone tell me if the light green one could be a "World of Color"? What I thought were WOC before I think are those French "peanut pumpkins".

These 3 were growing on the field next to my yard (they are mine :-) but I was afraid they were going to be eaten.

Found these 2 cuties growing in the turtle pen so I just had to have them!

And here is my "Peanut pumpkin" resting in its hammock.

I'm going to pull the rest of them next weekend, because I'm sure we're going to get a frost soon and I have to leave town for a few days.

I didn't get that many this year, but the big Goosebumps is about the size of the one I paid $12 for last year, so I'm good.

beautiful!!! sadly i have not a single nut or bump on my peanut pumps and a hard surprize frost killed all my vines last week!!! 29 overnite, then back to 80 not a happy camper, not suposed to get that till 0ct 20th al least!!!

notolover, those look wonderful!

There's a few pumpkin plants growing in a compost pile in someone's yard that I pass every day for work... is it weird that I want to stop my car, get out and go look at their pumpkin? I really crank my neck every day to get a good look. It looks like a giant bright orange pumpkin and I want to see it up close so badly!!

My little roadside stand is doing really well! I've been bringing the twins with me and it's really fun. I have it open on weekends and lots of cars have been pulling in. I can't believe how quickly those pumpkins are going! I think I've sold about a third of my wagon load already.

Some days I've had the stand open on the honor system and they can even make their own change in the cash box. So far so good!

Here's a picture of my little Julie reeeeeaching for ALL the gourds! She must touch each and every one. :)

I have all my stuff spread out on two wagons and clearly priced. Along with my pumpkins and gourds, I have straw, corn stalk bundles, mums (not grown by me), burlap banner flags and my homemade goat milk soap. Here's the other wagon...

Love it, Caroline!
Keeps the pics and posts coming.

carlyg, Its going to be tough. If they are just golf-ball sized, I think they might be mostly full grown but still green by then.

BTW I'm in Dallas area, Garland to exact.

I have some Cinderella Pumpkins growing. I started them in mid Aug.
Plants are huge now, but no fruit yet. I have one female that may open tomorrow morning. I hope to get some good pumpkins before we get our first frost. I'm not counting on any being ready by Halloween, but would love to have some as decorations and for pies for Thanksgiving!

I got my first female flower to open this morning for my Cinderella pumpkin (Rouge vif D'etampes). I pollinated it by hand this morning since I haven't noticed much bee activity lately.
As you can see I'm still mulching my vines over.

Here is my haul for the year minus the 3 in the pic last week. There are a few more small ones that I'm leaving on the vines until Wednesday.

The biggest ones aren't easy to see. They aren't gigantic, but still pretty heavy to move around. The one on the bottom right is the one that fell. It didn't rot, but it never got a chance to "peanut" up.

LCarlonine: glad your sales picked up and it's a good thing you have all that help from your little ones :-) I can't imagine how tired I'd be if I had to harvest all of yours.

And I had to laugh at your post about trying to see the pumpkin growing in the compost pile. There was just a thread about a month ago on the Cactus forum about someone seeing a different kind of Agave growing and he had to turn around to get a better look. Turned out that it was made of metal.

Then I was really laughing when I saw the same metal agaves for sale at my local grocery store that same weekend.

The year I got my 100# pumpkin (pretty good for the hi desert). My neighbor spotted it from a field away and had to come to see what that big yellow thing was. He didn't believe that it was a pumpkin.

This post was edited by notolover on Sat, Sep 20, 14 at 20:01

My Rouge Vif D'etampes ( this is the same flower I posted almost a week ago) yesterday morning. This morning I pollinated another one and expect a couple more tomorrow morning .

That ia a wonderful bunch of pumpkins!!!

Heres my Rouge Vif D'Etampes, as of this past Sunday. I'm a bit concerned that its starting to darken in color, that it might not grow much more. Seems way too early, as its not very big yet. There is another pumpkin developing further down the vine, so maybe that is affecting it. Also this portion of the vine is now in a lot of shade. I am paranoid about rats eating my pumpkins, so I have them all covered in some tulle netting.