Yes, the 2008 season begins as soon as the 2007 is done. For the coming season I am contemplating a change in the garden. This change is based on the fact that most of the "big" pumpkins (1200#+) are grown in patchs no larger then 750 square feet, and the fact the biggest pumpkin I have ever grown was grown on a similar sized plant. The advantages to this are that I can rotate my planting sites. I will not plant in one-half the garden one year and then plant in it the next. The upside to this is hopefully it will delay developing any fungal diseases in the soil. I will plant several cover crops during the season on the off season site. This will allow me to build up orangic matter, increase soil tilth, and it should help considerably in weed control because the newly germinated weed seeds will be tilled in several time through the season. I will have to spend the winter researching what types of cover crops to plant.
This will still give me room for 8 plants that will be approximatley 750 square feet each.
I have spread 36 of straw per side, 350 bags of leaves on the south side and 250 bags of leaves on the north side. 16 yards of manure should be delivered sometime this month. I will put out about 35 bales of hay per side once I get my hay in.
January 18th, 2008
I hate winter. Hunting season is over. I don't icefish, My family won't go skiing.The only thing there is to do is think about warm weather activities. So I have been thinking about pumpkins. Still fine tuning my seed list. I have purchased another 869.5 Calai. That was a good plant to grow and it produced my biggest pumpkin so I will be trying it again. My seed line up is looking something like this for my 8 plants
1101 Northrup Other questionable seeds:
869.5 Calai 603 Muller has produced great color and now a decent sized pumkin
857 Christensen 876 Christensen Unproven but niether or the other three I may just give it a go
1071 Christensen 955 Brinkley if I can pick it up at an auction without breaking the bank
1040 Christensen 500 Northrup I didn't get good color on this one last year. In fact mine is the poorest color of the 500 offspring.
1016 Christensen 1230 Daletas, 1016 Daletas, 1233 Reiss, 730 Dill are long shots for making the list.
670 Daigle
March 14th
Seems like it has been a long winter!!! I still have over a foot of snow in the patch. I have not kept track of the date when the snow leaves the patch but this has to be the latest in 5-6 years. It could very well still be here in two weeks. It just depends on what the weather does. I still have not finalized my list. I do want to grow all the pumpkins in my A list. My B list includes the 955 Brinkley. I promised it would hit the dirt this season when I begged it so it has o move into the A list. Will have to bump one of those pumpkins or plant more then what I said I was going to. (that's probably what will happen. It is easy in the fall to say I'm not going to plant so many plants but in the spring it is hard to keep up to.
Here some photos to keep you warm!
Just for comparison to the left is my patch today. The two pictures to the right were from a year ago today. I had the pits dug and filled. I will have snow for another week or two and then the soil has to dry out before I can dig pits work in the patch. I may not get things started as early as I did last year.
I am going to start my tomatoes today.
