We are going to try to keep a diary of our growing season this year. This will be the start of our 26th season that Elaine and I have been growing giant pumpkins. It is unquestionably the strangest start to any season with all that is going on in the country and the world. This will be the first time that we have ever started a season not knowing for sure if it will be possible to attend a weigh-off in the fall.
We have decided to put in 2 AG’s this year and hope for the best. We live 20 minutes south of Port Elgin along the shores of Lake Huron. Living so close to the shore of the lake has its pros and cons. In the spring time the lake really hurts us by keeping the temperature down with the cold winds coming off the lake. In the fall it helps us because the lake gives us heat off its warmed water. We rarely get a frost until well into October.
We are going to use soil heating cables for the first time this year. Hoping that it will help us with our cooler spring weather. We purchased the cables from Amazon---140W/120V/1.7A 48 feet long. They are supposed to have a built in thermostat. Time will tell if they are any good.
Here we have attached the cable to some plastic fencing with tie wraps. Trying to keep a 3” spacing as per the instructions. Still have not been able to get into patch yet to install cables. The instructions say to lay the cables on a bed of sand
We have started the germination process today. The seeds we will grow this year, if they germinate will be the 2016 Lancaster & 2118 Barron, plus a couple of backups.
Just a little one for Doug haha
I was wrong, Doug found one more tomato. He wants to grow this one out to get the seeds. It's from the 5.36 Lyons. He really likes this seed line.
He thinks it will end up to be around 5 lbs.
Today I went to Doug Court's house to help him document the examination and weighing of his final tomato of the season. This tomato has caused him a bit of anxiety over the last couple of days. He called me a week ago to say that he still had a fairly big tomato, but it was growing in such a way that he could only see the front part of the tomato. Three days ago Doug calls to tell me that he cut part of the plant away to get a better look at the tomato and noticed that there were two stems going down into the center, so he thought it has to be two tomatoes growing together. Then Doug calls yesterday saying he has removed the tomato and thinks it’s now one.
This is a look at the stem. We believe the stem split at some point and as the tomato grew larger the stem halves grew apart giving the illusion of two stems.
A few more pictures of different sides. This was grown from a 5.36 Lyons (Domingo)
I recorded a video of the examination and weighing of the 6.48 Court tomato. Link below
Congratulations to Doug for a great tomato season!
The beautiful weather we had in the past three days, has given us a chance to clean up the garden. We still had two healthy cabbage plants still growing in the garden. We are thinking, we would like to try and get some seed from the cabbages next year, but have never tried it before. I asked Art Johnston and John Butler at Woodbridge for some advice on the process. They told me to dig up the cabbage with as much root as possible and replant it into a large container. Keep them in a root cellar for the winter and then replant next spring. So that is what we have done. (Picture below)
The vines and vegetation have been removed as well as the heating cables. The patch has been leveled with a disk. Next will be the application of manure.
For the past few years a famer has offered us manure. He lives about 8 Km away so it takes me a little over an hour round trip including loading and unloading time for a load of manure. I spent most of the day today getting manure.
The next nice day we need to get our old manure spreader out and put it to work.
Leaving for Woodbridge Saturday Morning
The weather was decent and we had a good drive. We were the first to weigh a pumpkin at Port Elgin and the last to weigh a pumpkin at Woodbridge.
Here we are getting unloaded.
Getting hooked up to go to the scale
We were very happy to have another pumpkin go heavy for us. It was estimating around 1536 lbs. and actually weighed 1699lbs. About 10 % heavy.
Good for 2nd place.
1699 Mackenzie (2016 Lancaster X 2118 Barron)
Congrats to Jim & Kelsey Bryson for getting first place for their pumpkin weighing in at 1782.2 lbs.
We managed to get first for our field pumpkin (below) weighing 98.4 lbs.
Thank you very much Dave McCallum and the Woodbridge Fair committee for organizing and providing us with a GPC weigh-off in these trying times.
Good luck tommoro you guys
Good luck tomorrow
This is loading day for our last pumpkin. We wanted to start early to get some of the vines out of the way before lifting the pumpkin.
Ready for the first lift.
The bottom looks good. On to the pallet it goes. We measured the 2016 Lancaster after we placed it on the pallet. We actually lost a few OTT inches from the last measurement in the garden. This one was hard to measure because of its shape. So, after three of us carefully measured the fruit flat on the pallet the official measurement for the 2016 Lancaster will be 413”.
We even had a special guest stop for a visit. Doug Court, he gave the pumpkin a few thumps and a blessing.
Off to Woodbridge tomorrow. Good luck and safe travels to everyone.
Congrats you guys. Huge pumpkin!
Weigh off day is finally here. We were the first pumpkin in line to unload and weigh today. Lots of changes this year because of Covid 19. The pumpkinfest committee did an excellent job to keep things moving smoothly and safely. The growers really appreciated the opportunity of having a place to get their summers worth of hard work officially weighed/measure. With all the things that are going on right now we are very lucky Port Elgin was able to do this for us.