gardening

The Most Sincere Pumpkin Patch

“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

There is not a pumpkin patch anywhere that is more sincere than the one we got our pumpkin from this year, because the pumpkin patch was right in our own backyard!

“He’ll come here because I have the most sincere pumpkin patch and he respects sincerity.” It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

As evidence, here is a photo I took that captured the Great Pumpkin (Harold, our friendly yard bunny) right before he rose (sproinged) out of the pumpkin patch (this was the second time that happened…the first time, I didn’t see him in there, wasn’t expecting it, and he scared me half to death when he jumped up!). He liked to hang out there in the shade of the leaves throughout late August and early September.

So about our pumpkin patch. Every year after Thanksgiving I toss our pumpkins that we picked at the local pumpkin patch into the backyard so they can return to the earth. And most years in the spring and early summer, pumpkin plants start growing, and sometimes even flower. In the end, though, I usually mow them over at some point when I’m doing yard work. But when Bunny planted a small garden near where I had tossed them this summer, I decided to leave them alone and see what happened. These are the first two pumpkins we harvested early in August:

We had tossed some mini pumpkins out there last fall, but I’m also notorious for growing exceptionally small plants, so we had no way of telling if they were supposed to be the size they were when they turned orange. We do think that even though they were all small, we might have had two different types of pumpkins, because in total we harvested two regular shaped pumpkins and two that are fairly oblong (with one still growing on the vine…we’ll see what it turns into if it stays healthy).

And then one day, Ladybug and I found this pumpkin growing on one of the other plants (in addition to different shapes of pumpkins, the leaves on some of the plants were noticeably different, too), and by the time we noticed it, it was already larger than the ones we had harvested…and it also had a neighbor! We weren’t really sure what it was, because its shape was different still, and I was thinking it was a squash of some sort, because last year, we picked something that looked rather like a butternut squash. We also weren’t sure it would survive, because its flower had remained attached for what I thought was too long, and I was worried it had caused the gourd to rot.

After removing the wet flower, and letting it dry in the sun for a few days, it became clear that no harm had been done. We made sure to water it daily (because we really haven’t had much rain in the last month or so), and occasionally we even rotated it so it didn’t develop too much of a flat spot on one side.

It kept growing…a lot. It seemed like you could literally tell a difference from one morning to the next! Chickadee wanted to make it a “milk pumpkin” like in Farmer Boy to see if that would make it grow even larger, but we have far too many cats that wander our neighborhood and yard for that to work.

I don’t know why the lighting here is so weird (perhaps it was a cloudy day), but it finally started turning orange, and filling out to a more standard pumpkin shape, so we were fairly convinced that we were really growing a regular size pumpkin!

I was a little worried about it along the way. When its skin was still soft and bright green, I dinged it with my fingernail, and part of it peeled off. I was sure that was going to be the end of the pumpkin, but it grew more skin over the blemish. Meanwhile, its neighbor, which had been bigger all along and presumably healthier because it didn’t have its skin injured, died on the vine. Growing stuff is weird, and I had no idea what I was doing!

Anyway, despite the injury, it kept growing and turning orange, and I was really hopefully we might get to harvest it.

Yesterday when I checked on it, there was very little green left, and even though it’s still early in the season (possibly too early for it to last until Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving), I decided we’d go ahead and pick it before any bugs or pumpkin diseases got to it. You can even see its “scar” from the fingernail incident here…it’s amazing how healing nature is!

A successful harvest!

I bought a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate pumpkin spice caramel squares as a prize for whoever came closest to guessing the correct weight. It weighs a whopping 12 pounds, and Moose won the contest with a guess of 12.7 pounds (no, we didn’t score it The Price is Right style, but I did consider it).

Bunny has one of the small pumpkins that we picked early in August at college…here’s the remaining harvest to date:

And so, that is how we came to have the most sincere pumpkin patch in town, maybe even in the whole state! We may just have to give it a try again next year and see if we can repeat our success!

Chickadee Thursday

I know it’s still early in August, but we went pumpkin picking this week. In our backyard. Yes, I grow everything in miniature, but Chickadee thinks our harvest is cute!

A Pioneer Woman I’m Not

I’ve decided to venture into the world of vegetable gardening this year. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not because of rising fuel and food costs–with all the money I’ve sunk into the blasted thing so far, I could probably do a full week’s worth of grocery shopping. No, I did it for two reasons. 1.) I’ve always liked the idea of gardening. It’s some kind of primitive thing I guess–tilling the land, growing something for my family to eat. The whole hard labor followed by the fruits of my labor thing. And also B.) I thought it would be a good learning experience for my children to see how something grows from seed (or seedling in a lot of cases) to a vegetable bearing plant.

So, aside from the effort that went into digging the rows for the garden, (I had no idea that what is I guess is a clay based soil would be so hard to dig through and so heavy!), and the lugging around 40 pound sacks of topsoil, there are many gardening struggles I was previously unaware of. For example, I am familiar with the concept of drought. I’ve heard about it on the news since I was a kid, read about it in the Little House books, etc., etc. I know that too little rain is a big problem for farmers. I had never considered, however, the problem of too much rain. As it is right now, I appear to be down one cucumber and two broccoli plants because of flooding. It also remains to be seen how many of the carrot and radish seeds may have been washed away. Part of this is, I’m sure, due to poor drainage and a bad slope in the backyard, but I think it’s also partly just that there has been so darn much rain the last few weeks, and plants only need so much water. Lesson learned.

Problem two, which I had considered, but kind of brushed off as not a threat–something eating my plants. Bigger threat than I anticipated. Not only did something (rabbit? skunk? bird?) have the nerve to go after on of my beautiful and amazing smelling basil plants, it apparently had no taste at all, and decided that the basil was no good, leaving the poor leaves to wilt on the ground. And it wasn’t enough to take just one leaf, but whatever it was took every leaf off of one plant. I was really looking forward to fresh pesto, too…

The third problem, which was actually the first one I ran into, was also not something unfamiliar to me, but something I certainly wasn’t expecting in late April–a late season frost. The only things that survived that calamity were the broccoli that can’t hold up to rain, celery, and the onion sets. I suppose I should have known better, but I was eager to plant, and in my defense, my experiences with living down here so far have suggested that late April is a great time for planting.

Problem four, which didn’t actually cause any damage, thankfully, but easily could have, was hail. Good thing for me, the hail was mostly pea sized, but I could see how quickly plants, especially small ones like my seedlings, could be flattened by hail.

Problem five–lack of sun. Now, I know there are some rays of light getting through, even with the crappy weather we’ve been having, but my plants are looking decidedly not green enough, so I’m guessing they’re lacking in the photosynthesis department. Both the plants and I have had enough clouds, thank you very much!

So where does that leave me? I’m just waiting for a plague of grasshoppers or a horde of hungry blackbirds (I read the Little House books a lot as a child, and I’ll admit, also as an adult!) to attack the garden next. I can’t really imagine what else could happen, but I’m sure if it can, I’ll find out about it soon enough. It’s really sobering to consider what trials farmers face–how many things can go wrong each year, and how much of it is completely out of their control. It makes me quite grateful that I don’t have to depend on the land for my survival, and that there are grocery stores and farmers markets where I can get all of the fresh produce I desire, without having to do the work or depend on the weather and wildlife to cooperate with me! I’m happy to have my little garden as a learning experience and pleasant diversion that gives me something fun to do outdoors.

To summarize what I’ve planted, even though I’ve already lost some of it–four broccoli plants, three cucumber plants, three jalepeno plants, three each summer squash and zucchini plants, three roma tomato and six beefsteak tomato plants, three celery plants, one cilantro, four basil, one set of onions (why are they called a set?) and an envelope each of carrot and radish seeds. So, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, and if I actually get any produce out of this garden this year at all!