Steve was pretty excited and we went to this wonderful website called the pumpkin nook to learn about raising our own. We learned that these gals are pretty easy to grow, yet they are very sensitive. Most of the early summer was spent watering and hoping for baby pumpkins. Later, Steve got more serious and made a cover for them. If the female flowers get cold, they die! There were a few large ones that started, but Steve was wanting more.
He finally decided to pollinate the female flowers. And they took off! Here you see a male flower on the left, and on the right a not very old female. The gals open in the morning and that is when they are at their best. So, using a q-tip, Steve touched the inside of one of the very abundant male flowers and tapped the pollen into the female blossom. If he was fortunate, the baby pumpkin on the end of stem grew into an orange ball!
We harvested these ones first. Almost at the start of September! We knew we had some great jack o lanterns!
As the weather chilled, we diligently covered and uncovered the girls so they would not get too cold and grow big and strong. Unfortunately, the days just were not warm enough and they stalled.
For some reason this photo-which really is NOT slanted-seems to want to blog off kilter. The littler green pumpkins we ended up tossing as it and three others froze. The bright orange one made 4 cups of puree and the larger one is orange all over now.
And here is Steve with his 12 'girls'. He did have two more, but they went to Beaverton with Tony and Kym. We planned on carving the bigger ones for Halloween, but decided against it. One, we were very busy at the end of October and, two, we did not want to have someone come and smash our hard work while the house was empty over the holiday. So, he plans on carving some for Thanksgiving! It should be fun, we hope it doesn't snow!
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