chickensense

My husband tilled the future pumpkin patch Saturday!  Yay!!  I bought 5 bags of organic humus with composted manure which Jesse and I will be mixing into the soil if it ever stops raining.  The short-season pumpkin seeds have been ordered, so after the soil is mixed with the humus/manure all we can do is wait.

This garden area is pretty big, I’m wondering if I should divide it into 3 very long, 3-foot-wide beds, or just keep it one big area for a real-live pumpkin patch. I don’t let anyone walk on my gardens so the soil won’t get compacted because I never want to till again. If this becomes a large pumpkin patch, it’ll have to be all tromped on to plant and harvest the pumpkins. But if I do the narrow beds, who will tell the pumpkin vines to stay off the paths? 

It is a no-brainer really, I never again want to wait on someone to do tilling, so I’ll make long, raised beds. I’ll just share the paths with the pumpkins for a while. And early next spring the beds will already be ready for planting watermelons.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m planting pumpkins that are supposed to mature quickly. One variety, Neon, is a semi-bush type, with 8 to 10 lb fruit, that claims to mature in 60 to 80 days. The other, New Rocket, produces 14 – 22 lb fruit that matures in 86 days. What odd measurements 14 to 22 lbs, and 86 days. Why don’t they just say 15 to 20 lbs, and 85 days?

This is a photo of the garden as it was in spring, on March 30. The bed along the left now contains bush green beans, onions, and several squash & zucchini. The right side, farthest away are the blueberry bushes, then the right corner that you can’t see currently has the lima beans growing like crazy. It really hasn’t been used in a few years, except the outer raised beds which used to have tons of daisies. The drought of summer 2007 and the goats of 2008 killed them all though.

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I’ve been asking for 2 months for my hubby to till my garden. He planted greens this spring, then just let them go to seed. I had planned that area for watermelon, then pumpkins, but it’s waaayyy too late for watermelon, and getting close to being too late for pumpkins–to have them by Halloween, that is. I did some research today, and found that I have plenty of time to plant short-season pumpkins. I found some that take only 80 days, and right now we have 107 days until Halloween. No problem even if the seeds take a week to get here.

We need the money these pumpkins might bring in–around here a soccer-ball-size pumpkin is $5, larger ones $10 or even $15. I don’t want to count my pumpkins before they are planted, however 25 x $5 = $125, and 15 x $10 = $150, total = $275. $15 for seeds, $10 for humus/manure, and a few dollars for watering–those are the only expenses. Forty pumpkins is a low estimate of the yield I might get, yet I’d be very happy with that for my first try at selling anything I produce.

Sooooo, I ordered 2 types of pumpkin seed from Vesey’s in Canada, and tomorrow I’m going to till the garden myself if hubby doesn’t. (That will be a very bad thing for me, I’ll be in bed in pain for 2 days afterwards, but time doesn’t wait for procrastinating husbands.) I’m anxious to do it tomorrow because the weather report says it will be 83 degrees and partly sunny for today and tomorrow–unbelievably cool for this time of year, it has been in the upper 90’s for weeks. I’ve got to take advantage of it.

I found the pumpkin seeds at Veseys, which is in Canada: 

Neon

The catalogue describes it as:

"Be the first gardener around with orange pumpkins! Beautiful shaped medium orange pumpkins have a strong dark green handle. This hybrid forms semi-bush plants which don’t take up as much space and allows for higher density plantings. Can weigh up to 8-10 lbs and have dark yellow to light orange interior. Maturity ranges from 60-80 days. Approx. 35 sds/pkg."

New Rocket 

The catalogue describes it as:

"All of the earliness and yield of Rocket but with better color, better shape and a stronger handle. These improvements make one of our strongest pumpkin varieties even better. New Rocket produces somewhat larger fruit weighing 14-22 lbs. Be one of the first to the competitive fall market. Early maturity in about 86 days. Approx. 15-20 sds/pkg."

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