Giant Fail

All the things we learned during giant pumpkin season

Last year I grew volunteer pumpkins effortlessly. They popped up from a Halloween pumpkin that decomposed in the flower bed in front of our house.

That experience gave me the unwarranted overconfidence to attempt a bigger project this year. Fueled by my daughter's excitement, we set out to grow a giant.

To enter a giant at the state fair we needed a to grow at least a 200 pound pumpkin. After seeing the types of monster pumpkins others have grown this seemed like a realistic minimum.

We did our homework

I read a massive amount about giant pumpkins before we started. I learned about fertilizer, vine training, and how to plan to transport a giant to a weigh-off. Perhaps the best thing about the giant pumpkin growing community is that there are a whole lot of experienced growers out there and they are more than willing to share their expertise.

The Facebook group Backyard Giant Pumpkin Growers is full of advice from seasoned growers and it's a great place to ask your newbie questions (or just read the answers to questions from other newbies).

In our state we have the Indiana Pumpkin Growers Association, a group dedicated to giant pumpkin growing. There are weigh offs after the fair that would give us an extended growing season - and wouldn't be necessary once the state fair shut down because - 2020.

With the membership we received a package of seeds from giants grown by successful growers.

By all measures I thought I was a gardener bordering on obsessive. But, much like a seasoned dog owner thinking they are prepared for a German Shepherd, I was about to find out just how much I didn't know.

For the record - I was also that seasoned dog owner once. (Perhaps I am also learning that as rule I tend to jump into challenges blindly and figure it out as I go.)I wish I could say the giants grew as well as the German Shepherd.

Pumpkin seeds are fancy

Pumpkin seeds aren't like other seeds. They have a fancy naming system that helps growers know the lineage - much like a purebred German Shepherd.

Seed names include the last name of the grower of the pumpkin the seeds came from and the pumpkin's weight, along with the year it was grown. Below that are the last names and weights of the mama (the seed that pumpkin came from ) and the papa (the plant that the male flower came from).

It's a little bit like the second chapter of the Iliad...you know where Homer lists the cast of characters and from whence and whom they came and I fell asleep I don't know how many times because who assigns the Iliad for summer reading, Mrs. Steele?

But I digress, this seed naming is the result of careful pollination wherein growers cover female flowers and pollinate with specific males, taking care to ensure that the female isn't accidentally pollinated by some rogue bee with an unknown specimen like some common street pumpkin.

My pumpkins were common street pumpkins. I hand-pollinated, but I went to no great lengths to secure the female and ensure the lineage because this was not going to be the year that I grew the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

99 Problems

Part of the reason I knew we weren't going to grow a giant was the lack of space I had for a true giant. I hoped to break 200 pounds, but I knew better than to expect 800 pounds.

The bigger problem ended up being pests. Last year in my debut garden I had discovered the scourge of the squash world - the squash bug. Squash vine borers, squash bugs, squash bug nymphs. The exact terminology aside, they are terrible. A rose by any other name, after all, is still a rose. (Shakespeare and Homer in one post, Mrs. Steele would be proud).

These horrible bugs seem to exist for the same reason that random things fly out of the sky in video games - to create an obstacle and make winning that much sweeter once you vanquish the enemies. (Classic literature - on point, video games - not so much).

I spent hours trying to annihilate these pests. Though my determination to limit my means of assassination to organic methods led to the ultimate defeat of my pumpkin plants, it ultimately allowed the aforementioned German Shepherd to continue to poke around the patch and eat the occasional pumpkin leaf.

It also allowed bees and hummingbirds and goldfinches to regularly visit the garden to pollinate and munch on sunflower seeds, so sacrificing our pumpkin season wasn't a total loss.

The results

We started about 10 seeds, 6 germinated. Of the ones that didn't, a couple were so rotted that when squeezed they looked like someone out of Dr. Pimple Popper.

Of the six that germinated, two were basic Atlantic Giants from MIGardner. One promptly turned a sickly yellow and died. The other became Agnes, the plant that would go on to produce our one and only "giant" pumpkin, which at 15 pounds was decidedly not a giant.

The five other plants met their fates in various ways. Tim died of a likely virus weeks after transplant, one, left unnamed was chomped in its entirety by Huey (the German Shepherd), and the others (including Agnes) were consumed by squash bugs and vine borers.

The truth about squash bugs

There's plenty of advice out there about how to avoid the awful bugs, but none that I've tried were successful. Nasturtiums used as trap plants seemed to be completely ignored by the squash bugs, and perhaps even attracted them.

What I didn't know about them last year was two-fold.

1. Squash bugs overwinter in your garden and come back the next year.

2. They can freaking fly!

Committed to animal and kid safe organic options, I was limited. My arsenal included a red Solo cup full of soapy water and a clothes pin (for squishing them). This worked...but it was not manageable. It was also completely ineffective for the vine borers, which I learned were a different bug and invaded the stems.

Other suggestions like tilling in the spring to kill larvae were also ineffective. Short of using Sevin or another method that may have annihilated the squash bugs, but would have definitely killed the already endangered bees, I am out of safe options.

But...there are squash bug resistant varieties of pumpkins and squash, like acorn squash and Sweet Cheese pumpkins. While I try to protect my remaining gourd and Jack-be-little pumpkins for this season, I'm beta testing a new method: spraying a mixture of water and Dawn dish soap on the bastards. Even if it doesn't work, it makes me feel better. It worked on the Japanese beetles.

For now, giant pumpkins are probably not in the garden plan until I have a better hold on the bugs.