Pumpkin update

This is our first year growing pumpkins to sell.  When Steve decided to sell all his cows and calves, we wanted to do something different in an effort to MAKE money instead of LOSE money in the farming business.  We plowed up the bottom near the barn and sowed it in pumpins.  Since cows used to be all over this field, and cows used to poop all over this field, we thought it would be nice rich ground in which to grow our new crop. 

Here is an updated pumpkin picture.  The majority of our pumpkins are Jack-O-Lantern type like this one.  They seem to be at various stages of growth, but many of them are soccer ball size and are starting to turn orange like this one. 

Our goal when we planted them at the end of May was to have pumpkins ready in late September for fall decorating.  Then we would still have plenty left for mid to late October for halloween.  Now I worry that maybe they will be ready too soon.  They just kind of look almost ready to me... for some reason I didn't expect them to be orange in July or August.  This is certainly a learning experience for us... we get most of our pumpkin growing information off the internet, and as with anything else we will learn from our mistakes.  Hopefully next year we'll be able to plow more land and plant even more pumpkins.  It would be cool to have the name BOLTE PUMPKINS be a name that everyone recognized! Hey, we gotta dream!

Many of them are still green like this one, so that's probably a good thing.  Isn't this one pretty?

Those were just the ones around the edges.  Most of them are lost out there.  We really have no idea what 95 percent of our pumpkins look like since it's impossible to wade through them without breaking them.  It's hard to tell what's out there!  There could be an entire pumpkin city with little garden fairies living among them and we would never know! 

The garden fairies could have built homes, factories, and schools by now... they could have an underground subway system.....

These are the jumbo pumpkins.  We planted only a handful of these because we won't know what to do with them if they grow like they're supposed to.  These are the BIG BIG fellows that you have to roll across the field and use a crane to lift them onto a truck to haul out of here.  Actually I don't know how big they'll get, but they are certainly not your typical jack-o-lantern pumpkins.  The largest pumpkin ever grown weighed 1,140 pounds, so we might as well dream big and shoot for the record.  If it happens, you'll be the first to know!

The jumbo pumpkins looked different from the beginning.  They started off with a yellowish color and they are now turning orange.  They're about the size of basketballs right now, and they have a pretty smooth surface.

Then we have a few of these guys here.  They are called cushaw green pumpkins, and I planted them solely because I thought the picture looked cool on the package of seeds.  I looked them up on the internet, and apparantly they are fabulous to eat, but I thought they would look pretty for decoration beside the typical orange pumpkins. 

I love these!

We also planted a few hills of wee-be-littles.  They are little tiny pumpkins used for indoor decorating on tables and in baskets.  Even though I know they're in there somewhere, I can't find them right now in all those vines.  Maybe the garden fairies know....

We'll keep you posted on the pumpkin progress!