Small Pumpkin Harvest

Well that is about it for my pumpkins! Some rotted way too much rain here. If I'm lucky I'll get one more!

Dreaming of Pumpkins

I just got my Jung Seed Catalog and I was thrilled to see many amazing pumpkin varieties.
Here are a few I would like to try.
The first one is called Batwing. It is a bicolor type orange and very dark green which looks black.
The middle variety is called Cotton Candy. A very pure white.
Last but not least is a Superfreak variety called Goosebumps.

A Pumpkin Flower

image source

Why carve a pumpkin with a regular, old scary face when you can can carve a FLOWER?

They're Here!

I have two and need only one more to make my little monsters happy at Halloween! Maybe the Great Pumpkin will shine down on my garden and give me just one more! I'll keep you posted.

My Haunted Veggies

Well my pumpkins are doing pretty well. The scarecrows don't really work. The deer don't seem to mind them. The rest of our veggies are on the deck. Keeps the most critters away!

Pumpkin Seedlings!

So far so good! This variety is Big Max which can grow up to 100 lbs. I'm just hoping for a few good ones to carve. A great book on Pumpkins is The Compleat Squash A Passionate Grower's Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes and Gourds by Amy Goldman.

So, should probably

explain the masthead picture. :) Not something you see in your everyday garden...unless you work for a CSI team or something :)

Every year I like to create something creepy that is not part of the yard display ... one of my larks I like to call Frog Queen follies.

I have two raised vegetable beds in my garden and last year I got so distracted with Halloween that I did not make time to plant any vegetables. (I really missed the fresh tomatoes) Anyway, while I am looking out my upstairs window at the garden below I get this idea to put a skeleton in one of the beds and pose it like it is pushing its way out of the ground, and think I should plant some vines that look like they are trying to pull him back down. Better yet, pumpkin vines!

I purchase two small pumpkin plants and start another 6 plants in my garden window.

Then I head out to the shop and grab a spare Bart and do some hardware removal and do my best to hide the remaining hardware with Fix-it to get him ready for the yard. I use a small piece of rebar to hold his head up and prop him in the bed.

I sprinkled two large bags of organic mulch over the skeleton to give him that half buried look. I knew going into this project that I was doing all this work for the sole purpose of taking pictures, I started too late in the summer for the vines to actually produce pumpkins by October. So, to get the dense foliage I wanted I had to over plant.

I started with two 4 week old Jack O' Lantern pumpkins planted in the bed around him. Over the next few weeks I continue to plant the pumpkin seeds I started in the house, so the vines are in various stages of growth. As the vines continue to grow I head out in the yard and train them through the mouth of the skeleton and through and around the ribcage and legs.

I purchased a few small Sugar Pumpkins to put in the bed to add to the look, I tried to lay the stems under existing vines to make it look like they had grown on the vines. I placed a fake crow on his rib cage and headed for the camera!

I took some decent pictures, but then my friend Marci Brandt (the person who photographs the Davis Graveyard - who also takes great garden photos) came over and took these amazing photos.

Yeah, when I see her stuff I wonder why I even bother :)

The plan is to permanently pose this skeleton in that vegetable bed and grow pumpkins or other vines around him each year - definitely a garden folly. He currently has a new friend....the scarecrow, but that is a story for another day.