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Showing posts with the label pumpkins

Little Pumpkin - Too Little, Too Late?

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This photo shows the interesting dynamic at play in our garden:  many of our pumpkins are way out ahead of the season - being BRIGHT ORANGE, some or still in the midst of their growing stages - still green and bulking up on size, and then there's this little guy.  It is already mid-September and he's the size of a golfball.  He doesn't have a chance to make it does, he?  There's not enough warmth left in the air to power him, right? 

More Pumpkins

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A bunch of my pumpkins are way ahead of schedule (due to the hot August maybe?) and they'll likely be rotten long before Halloween comes, but there's a whole separate set of pumpkins that are currently springing up from the vines.  These ones are still small - like 12" softballs and are bright green.  I planted 3 different kind of seeds:  Big Max (competition size), the Trader Joe's Flat-style grey pumpkin , and some other variety (That I can't quite remember!) that is smallish - like a volleyball.  Here's hoping these are some Big Max ones!

Trader Joe's Flat Pumpkins - Seedlings Sprout

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Last fall, Nat came home from Trader Joe's with an odd-shaped, flat, soft-orange colored pumpkin.  If you look carefully at the photo below (from my scarecrow blog post last fall), you can spot the pumpkin on our front porch, at the top of the stairs. After doing a bit of web research, I figured out that saving the seeds from this beauty and attempting to get them to re-grow was pretty easy .  You scoop them out - just like you would if you were going to eat them - rinse them off, then let them dry on a piece of newspaper for a week or so.  Once fully dry, you can pop them in an envelope and keep them in a cool/dark place.  With Elmhurst winter's, finding a cool/dark place is pretty easy.  I stuck them inside a drawer in my office. I had about a dozen seeds, so I put one seed in each compartment of one section of my non-peat greenhouse and crossed my fingers. So far, I haven't had a ton of luck with them, but there *is* hope:  one seed germinated and up has popped a v