Anyone into growing giant pumpkins?

[Doug]

Looking good this weekend so if all goes well I'm tilling the garden and getting in the watering system

[Doug]

Got the garden in and the Pumpkins are up 

[justDIY]

the giant pumpkin seeds I started a month ago have finally germinated

still waiting on the pepper seeds, tomato seeds, squash seeds

[BVnursery]

pumkin seeds seem to take a very very long time to germinate.

Thankfully, tomato seeds dont.

[Doug]

They should be up in about a week unless the seed is bad
Heres what I have so far as plants

[Doug]

Now were making some progress, vines er down and running

[Rob]

Do caterpillars eat into your vines at all?

[Doug]

You probably mean squash vine borers, they are out about now and can take down a pumpkin plant if caution is not used. You will notice your pumpkin leaves wilting in the sun, your stump will have mushy wet brown saw dust at the base. They will go after all types of squash plants except for Butternut squash. The adult is like a moth, red and black and will rest on your leaves and spends most of the time hovering around the stems dropping eggs on them. The eggs are a tiny red scale and can be plucked off. They hatch in a few days and will bore in the stem and work down to the vine and it will all be over in time! A lot of folks use organic methods to rid the pests but I use sevin because nothing else seems to do the job. Spraying the stems as well as the vines will kill the eggs. I would recommend spraying in the evening when the bees are in for the night.

[Doug]

Heres an update on the pumpkin patch

[justDIY]

my "giant pumpkin brand" 'kins grew to about 6" in diameter and then the vine died.

summer ended for us about a week ago - it went out with a bang though.  90's during the day.  now we get low 70s during the day and low 40s - high 30s at night, the frost will be here soon to kill the rest of my garden. we've had no rain since mid July, everyone's grass is dead except mine   despite watering my veggies for several hours a day, they didn't do much.

need to get the shop vac out and vacuum the furnace, get it ready to fire up.

[BVnursery]

Hotter and drier in Tennessee than it has been for 118 years..

We are down 14+ inches of rain and for 11 days its been over 100
something that happened last in 1953