Welcome to our 2022 growing diary. So far this year everything is far behind last year’s start to the season. We have not been able to get into our patch yet, because it is too wet. Last weekend it was very close to being dry enough. We were able to apply a layer of manure. It was too wet last fall to do this so we had to do it now. Of course the rain came the next day.
Today we got several trailer loads of coco coir from our neighbour. He removes the used growing medium from a local cannabis producer. It is stockpiled and allowed to break down. The picture below shows part of the large pile. The fresh stuff is on the right and the decomposed stuff is on the left.
It works very well to loosen up our clay soil.
The picture below shows our young watermelon seedlings along with some bushel gourd seedlings. Hopefully, in the next few days we will be grafting the watermelon to the bushel gourd. This will be 2 weeks later than last year. We had a lot of trouble this year getting the BG to germinate. That set us back a little.
We plan to grow 2 pumpkins and 1 squash this year. We started these plants a bit later as well. We started the germination process on the plants below last Saturday (April 23). So they are just nicely out of the soil. We have a couple of our 1747.5 as back up plants. For pumpkin we are going with the same seeds as last year. The 2118 Barron has always given us a heavy pumpkin, is very heat tolerant and is a very aggressive plant. Also going with the 2200 est Geddes again. This was also a very aggressive plant with a lot of potential (we think). The squash we are going with is Harley Sproule’s 1507.5. Thanks for the seeds Harley. It’s been a long time since we grew a squash.
This next picture is a look at our cabbage plants. We started these mid-February. They are from our own seed that we harvested last fall.
Finally, we would like to encourage all the GVGO members out there to start a diary this year. We can all learn from each other.
The weigh-offs are over for us this year. Now comes the dreaded garden cleanup. When the soil conditions are right I like to use the tractor to removed the vines. I use the manure bucket and let the tines pull the vines out like a giant rake.
They are all shoved to one end of the garden. It even works to pull out most of the weeds.
Here is the garden after the vines are all shoved to the far end
We removed 5 trailer loads for disposal
Next we applied 10 spreader loads of manure
Ploughed it in
We were able to get the garden seeded down with fall rye right before the rains started. We expanded the patch for next year because things were kind of tight for us this year. We are up to about 13000 ft² for next year.
We had a bit of a surprise when we weighed our 2118 Barron. It went 25% heavy 1402.5 Lbs. That is the 3rd year we have grown this seed and every year it has gone very heavy.
Below is Harley's 1507.5 and it is now the 1035 MacKenzie. It went 15% heavy.
Our cabbage for Sunday weighed 41.5 lbs. Both our cabbages were grown from our seed.
Doug Court had a trailer load of impressive entries.
His watermelon was a new personal best weighing 187.5 lbs.
Jeff had a great weekend! 2nd place on Saturday and the winner for Sunday.
Port Elgin had perfect weather for their weigh-off today. Congratulations to Dave McQuay for his first place pumpkin 1888.5 lbs. and Jeff Warner wasn’t far behind at 1805.5 lbs. John Butler took first place squash weighing in at 1335.5 lbs. John Butler also set a new North American record for sunflower 27 ½ feet tall. Amazing to see.
Our pumpkin was 5th place weighing in at 1271.5. That was close to what it measured.
Managed to get a new personal best for our melon. It weighed 173 lbs. An increase of 3 pounds. It went slightly lighter than it was measuring.
We also got first place with our cabbage, weighing in at 47 lbs.
Got home today and unloaded everything and then loaded up a pumpkin and squash for tomorrow.
The last few days have been very busy for us getting ready for Port Elgin Pumpkinfest. One of the most time consuming things was to get our chair pumpkin set up on a pallet. This year we grew a pumpkin under an oversized chair so that Port Elgin can use it for a public display.
The chair started out level but as the pumpkin grew the chair started to tip forward. So we had be make a large wedge under the pumpkin to level the chair. We also made some metal legs under the chair legs to stabilize everything. The next step was to add a step in front.
We took it to Port Elgin yesterday because we wouldn’t have room today.
We asked Joanne to be the first person to sit in the chair
Loaded up the 2200 Geddes for today
Our watermelon might be our only chance of a personal best this year.
Good Luck everyone!
My next entry for team 7 3 lbs. 14.2oz. or 3.89 lbs.