Tuesday, July 29, 2014

There Is A Pumpkin

In my third attempt at pumpkin growing one has finally set. It's already cantaloupe size and slowly enlarging. This is the Red Warty Thing from Botanical Interests, some of the seed swag from Asheville Fling 2012. There are even four other smaller potential pumpkins that look like they have been pollinated and are ready to go.

After two failed attempts is it possible I could end up with a bunch of pumpkins?





















You know how seed packets are always saying make a mound and plant three seeds per mound, blah, blah, blah.

Well they neglect the fine print which is the mound should be three feet tall, ten feet long, five feet across and composed entirely of dung. That is how I got my pumpkin. And a whole bunch of zucchini, who knows how many butternut squash, they are setting like crazy, and maybe a sack of cucumbers if they don't get consumed by the pumpkin.

I think I like dung pile gardening.





















I know these pink lilies came from the discard rack, but how did they end up pink? I don't think I'd buy pink lilies even at the discard price. Oh well. Pink lilies are better than no lilies and lilies are challenged up here by a number of pests and varmints.

I had some beautiful white lilies last year. They came up this spring big and fat and were promptly consumed from the inside out. All that's left are remnants.



























This year at least it's looking like there will be pumpkins.

3 comments:

Barry said...

Ah, the power of Dung! I have heard some mid-to-upper level management types referring to "a potent stimulus for growth", and it probably was the same thing. You might want to put a wire mesh shield over that baby - it looks very nice!

Lola said...

I agree with Barry. I've tried to grow them here with no success. May be something to the dung theory.

Lisa at Greenbow said...

I know that dung piles can make beautiful gardens. A friend of mine bought some old strip mine ground to make a home/garden on. They had a couple of horses which produced plenty of dung. Their flower and veggie gardens were tremendous due to the dung they planted in because the soil was what ever the mining operations left over. Really poor soil to even give it a soil name. Dung power!