Ladies and Gentlemen... Feed your Babies!!!!
Here's the Dirt on how to make your plant flourish during the next month, according to our expert grower Bill Clark...
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Master Grower, Bill Clark's plant as of last week. Note the crossed sticks that he gently placed under the vine to support it and keep the tender leaves up and out of the dirt where they might get moldy, dirty or eaten by grubs. |
-It is now time to remove the hoop houses (if you used one) as the vine is hearty enough to be unprotected.
- Pumpkin plants do not like extreme heat and will not tolerate the cold. Therefore you need to do everything you can to keep the plant happy. At night, place a bucket or a box over your plant and cover with a blanket to retain as much of the day's warmth as possible. Uncover in the morning when the temperature is above 45.
- Water your seedling as needed to keep the soil moist but not wet. Luke warm water is better than cold for watering.
- Your plant should start to vine in about 2-3 weeks, depending on the temperature and soil moisture. If your plant decides it wants to vine in the wrong direction, you can turn it in the right direction over the course of a couple weeks using a few stakes and moving the vine a little bit each day during the heat of the day, starting when the vine is about 12' to 18' long. At around 5 weeks old, your plant vine will grow up to 1 foot a day so be prepared to stay on top of it from this point on.
Important Notes: At this stage it is important to feed your young plantlets generously (for the next month or so) and bury the vines so that they start growing roots all along the vines, acting like a huge feeding system.
Follow Don Langevin's blog at http://www.giantpumpkin.com/email_5-31-11.html
Weather patterns are a crucial element in growing a champion pumpkin which makes it critical to be informed of what's ahead. A great resource to do this is:
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=GYX&product=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=yes