On 8/26/2016 5:22 PM, Pavel314 wrote:
This being the first summer in my retirement, I vowed to keep up with weeding the pumpkin patch. When they were little sprouts on their widely separated hills, I'd run the tiller between them every week or so to remove most of the weeds, then hand-weed close to and on the hills.

Once they started running, they totally covered the patch. Tall weeds are growing among the vines but I can't get to them to pull them out without risking stepping on pumpkin vines and crushing them.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, the pumpkins are thriving, spreading out as far as they can go, and there are already a variety of pumpkins and squash forming on the vines.

Paul

Congratulations on the retirement Paul, did mine in 2007 and am very happy.

We've never grown pumpkins but we have grown other big squash, they
seemed to like year old wood ash for some reason as we planted them in a
place where we had burned several old stumps I pulled with the tractor.
They covered everything for half an acre so the pumpkins are probably
killing off the lesser weeds by shading them and sucking up the
nutrients. I wouldn't worry to much about the tall ones, you can always
get them out after the pumpkins are harvested.

Hot this morning and we've had gentle rains passing over for about five
hours now and the temperatures is still close to 80F but at least it's
not 95-100F right now. The grass and gardens are growing like the
proverbial weed.

George