Milk Fed Pumpkin

[awsumth]

Originally Posted by Barbee

We use enormous amounts of water and we bury each node on the plant to encourage more root growth. We are faithful with our disease and bug prevention programs and we baby our plants all season long.

From the sounds of it, the wicking action from milk in a mason jar directly into the vine does increase the water the vine absorbs. And, I have noticed vine nodes do root and a few times I've torn my vine away and weeks later I find a vine growing from a buried node. Each node does seem like it could provide enough water and nutrients to achieve the same effect the mason jar does. Possibly even bigger.

I've read about how farmers in Japan use many similar practices to grow their premium melons, which retail over $100.

[Barbee]

Originally Posted by tlintx

My MIL wants to grow a giant pumpkin. She's not interested in competition, or bragging rights, she just really, really wants to grow a larger than usual pumpkin so she can take pictures of her grandbaby with it. I think her idea of giant is a lot smaller than yours. Can any of these techniques be adapted to produce, say, a really large standard Halloween pumpkin? If so, which would you recommend for a home grower?

I was going to sow some behind the garage in my compost pile to make a "pumpkin patch" for Halloween, but those are just regular old pumpkin seeds.

Yes I think they will help with any pumpkin. If she wants to try an actual atlantic giant, shoot me a pm and I'll send you some seeds and a few basic instructions. She should be able to get a 200-300 lb pumpkin off of it without too much trouble at all just by burying the vines and using a nice balanced fertilizer and spraying for bugs and disease every couple of weeks.

[tlintx]

Thank you so much! I will do so, it will make up for my not letting her get a photo op by putting the baby on a bull at the Rodeo this year.


Tl