A couple years ago we accidentally grew a batch of huge pumpkins on our old burn pile, and this year we're doing it again.
- Our method for growing pumpkins goes something like this:
- In September/October buy a big huge pumpkin at the store or pumpkin patch.
- Put it on the front porch along with all your fall decor.
- In November toss it out back on the yard clippings pile.
- Forget about it.
The next summer notice a couple HUGE leaves growing near where you dumped that old pumpkin and do nothing but watch them grow.
And that brings us to today:
This is our first pumpkin growing at this house and I'm excited to see 9 pumpkins on this plant in our backyard. It would be great to get at least 3 super nice big orange pumpkins (one for each kid) harvested for October. I'll try and get an update in a few weeks.
We have another plant going on the front of the property that has grown but we've yet to see any pumpkins forming. I'm guessing this might be a different kind of pumpkin as the vines are not growing out as much as staying clustered together?? But, I'm garden-ignorant really so that's just a guess.
So that's our "garden" right now are you growing anything? Was it accidental or on purpose?
Last October we went up to North Georgia to one of those fancy (read expensive as heck!) pick your pumpkin barns. We had a great time as a family and spent a ton of money on pumpkins for the family. We only ended up carving one of the pumpkins and afterwards we threw it and another pumpkin into the burn pile.
We never did get to burn it and saw this spring that we had pumpkin vines growing from the burn pile and a few weeks later we saw little pumpkins. We just let them be and watch to see what would happen.
I was really hoping that we’d be able to harvest before we moved, so I had to do a little online research about harvesting pumpkins and if it would be possible to keep it until October? I found this article on harvesting pumpkins to be extremely helpful, and encouraging.
This picture was taken 8 days ago it really doesn’t give much perspective on size, but we were all surprised at how big it had grown.
The weather people were predicting 100+ degree temps for the next few days so I wanted to check on the pumpkins to make sure we didn’t let any of them rot. I’m still not sure if I need to water the ones that are still out there?
I was super excited to walk around the back of the house to see our HUGE pumpkin bright orange and ready to be harvested. And surprise look to the left you can see a second one that will be ready soon!
I let the guys know we’d be harvesting tonight and of course the kiddo was super excited and proud.
Here is a little more perspective on the size of this pumpkin, ignore hubby’s goofy face and the kiddos closed eyes. For some reason all my pictures have the kids eyes shut.
I learned from the pumpkin article that the harvested pumpkin needs to cure for 10 days in a hot (80°-85°) and humid (85%) environment. We went with the garage we’ll definitely achieve the temperature but I’m not sure about the humidity. After curing it needs to be stored in a 50°–60° we plan to move it my parent’s basement which stays pretty cool. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The kiddo hauled the big pumpkin to the garage on the back of his 4-wheeler.
Another bit of perspective here is the pumpkin next to the kiddo’s yard ball.
And here are a few of our other pumpkins growing. One is actually growing up the woodpile and kind of hanging there:
We’re saying goodbye to this house in a little over a month so I’m hoping we will be able to snag a couple more pumpkins before we do go. I’m also curious to see how they do over the high temps this weekend.
Over all I’m pretty please with house easy it was to grow these HAHA. I’m hoping at the new house when we do actually start our permanent garden that we’ll see results as good as these. If we can keep this thing looking good until October it will be nice to have made our great pumpkin purchase last year into an dividend yielding investment. The prospect of avoiding the $30 expense of buying a huge pumpkin this fall is the most exciting part for me!
This summer we’ve been berry picking twice. In our OWN BACKYARD! The kiddo has been begging for a year now for us to start a garden and grow things. He has saved his cucumber seeds so we could plant them. Our plan to move has been in the works for a while so my plan to start a garden this year just wasn’t going to work out.
I did however decided to stop neglecting the blackberry bush that sits at the back corner of the property. We harvested one batch of berries last week. We pruned and weeded around the bush over the weekend. We went back yesterday to find another huge batch was ready to be picked. There are still a bunch of red berries growing and I imagine we will be having a few more sessions of picking.
The kiddo is a terrific helper and loves to pick the berries, he’s even made up a little song to go with the activity. We gave half of our first batch to Grandma B and then made homemade blackberry lemonade with the other half – it was pretty tasty!
My sister discovered that our new house also has blackberry bushes so I guess I will have another opportunity to tend to those bushes and hopefully have lots of blackberries to harvest next year.
So I have a few questions I’d love your help if you had some information to share.
1) Do you garden? What do you grow???
2) Do you know much about growing blackberries??? Tell me I’m clueless!
3) What blackberry recipes do you love?? I need to be doing something with all these berries.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for sharing!!
