My Wilted Thumb, or, My Poor Pumpkin

So back in May, as I goo-ed and gah-ed over my giant baby pumpkin, I promised updates all summer on her progress. There haven’t been any. I’d like to put forth the argument that I didn’t really break my promise, because – pitifully, there never really was much progress. First, here is the pumpkin plant as of last Saturday:

It doesn’t look so bad, save for one notable exception: do YOU see a giant pumpkin? I sure don’t. I don’t even see a little pumpkin. Problem is, none of my pumpkins seemed motivated to grow this year. Not even the regular-sized ones.

By the last week of August, I finally had a baby pumpkin on this plant. I figured that maybe if the fall was nice, I’d have a month to let it grow, and even a month ought to be good for a giant pumpkin to get sort of big, right?

I forgot one little detail. I have a beautiful 6-foot fence around my entire back yard. This pumpkin is not in my back yard. Here is the status of my pumpkin at present:

Poor pumpkin. It is a cruel fate, to be gobbled by deer then tossed aside like so much flavorless squash…

It was about the size of my fist when this happened.  Here’s my next-best pumpkin:

We’ll see how big it is when the deer get to it. I guess I’ll have to take a pass on this year’s Pumpkin Festival (unless I want to try clocking in with the world’s smallest pumpkin).

In other cool pumpkin updates, look what’s hanging out in my pumpkin flowers!

There’s no perspective in this photo, but each of these bees is about the size of my thumb. There were two bees in every flower that I peeked into. So strange! With that much polination action, you’d think I’d have more pumpkins. Maybe the beese waited until September to get busy this year.

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Giant Baby Pumpkin Comes Home

It’s here, it’s here! My giant pumpkin has arrived!

Isn’t it cute and inconspicuous? Well… that is a gallon ice cream bucket it’s in. I suppose “inconspicuous” is relative.

After a whole week of back-and-forth with Giant Pumkin Guru Matt, I finally managed to arrange a seedling hand-off this evening. The reply to the question “what does one do with a 300+ pound pumpkin?” : feed it to the deer, or possibly to bears. Of course. The whole week of back-and-forth was largely due to trying to answer this question. Turns out giant pumpkin growers simply assume you mean “how do I get this thing out of my garden?” (The answer involves a fork lift, by the way.) What happens after that is not nearly as important. Unless you’re my husband. But satisfied that we could feed it to the local bears, he agreed I could try this craziness.

Turns out these things are pedigreed. Check it out:

That’s the seed packet. These seeds come from a 798-pound pumpkin grown by someone named Biga in 2006. THAT pumpkin’s parents were 500-pound and 820-pound pumpkins grown in 2004 and 2005? I’m a little baffled about that, actually. And how do pumpkins come in male an female? Hm. Apparently I have more to learn about pumpkin breeding.

Mostly, I just want a really giant pumpkin to make my neighbors jealous.

I’m going to plant it tomorrow. I expect there will be updates all summer about this thing’s progress. I’m like the annoying cat lady, but with a pumpkin. Speaking of which, “this thing” clearly is not an acceptable reference for my giant pumpkin. It will need a name. Any suggestions?

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