Bob Hobden wrote:
dawn.wrightson wrote
This year on my allotment i want to grow a "Giant Atlantic Pumpkin"
with my 8yr old son, and he would like to enter it into a local
competition, and any money he gets from winning he wants to donate
to a charity, Guide Dogs for the Blind, as i am going blind. Any
tips or hints on how to grow the biggest from seed would be very
appreciated! Cos we want to win! Thanks.

Some of the successful chaps at the Boot Inn Pumpkin Club, Berwick
St.James, plant their very special seed on Christmas day! I believe
some of them got their original seed from the USA but they are very
cagey, they then use their own saved seed from right near the stalk
end of the biggest fruit.....
So, they should be planted now with warmth and grown on with regular
repotting until you can plant them out about the first week in June.
Plant a few and discard any that look weak, they say the biggest seed
gives the biggest plant and therefore biggest fruit.

They will need plenty of water and feed, never let them dry out or
have any other check to their constant growth.

Before you plant out prepare the ground by digging in lots of compost
over the whole area, but most important, dig a large hole at least a
spit and a half deep and round where the plant will be planted and
fill it with well rotted compost into which you can mix just a little
soil. If you have a polytunnel to grow them in so much the better.
Once out in the ground build a little dam (saucer) around the plant
with the removed soil so you can water right where the roots are,
push a long stick into this dam so you will still know where to water
once the plant has taken over the whole garden. A gallon of water a
day to start, double later as a minimum, don't let the leaves wilt.
Later, as the plant extends, cover over the leaf nodes with
soil/compost and provided there is moisture they will root there as
well, from then on the whole area will need to be kept moist. Lets
hope there are no hosepipe bans.

When a good healthy pumpkin starts to grow ensure the growth of the
fruit does not strain or rip the stalk from it, you may have to
gently move it. Do not let any other fruit start to form on that
plant, they probably won't anyway. Place something strong and smooth
under the fruit so it can grow/slide easily. Watch out for mice.
Later in the season if we start to get cool nights and the fruit are
still growing cover the fruit in the evening/night with something to
keep it warm. I kid you not. :-)

Feeding, that's a whole subject in itself. Use a high nitrogen to
start with once it's planted out then a balanced feed, I also use
Seaweed Extract rather a lot too.

Has anyone ever tried growing under sealed polythene and increasing the
carbon dioxide concentration in the air surrounding the plant? There is no
point in all the sophisticated stuff if the carbon dioxide level is
insufficient. Perhaps it is somewhat simplistic to say so, but plant weight
is basically added through photosynthesis, water, and carbon dioxide. It
seems to me that the first two are often controlled carefully, but nobody
appears to experiment by increasing CO2. I assume there would be an effect,
and maybe there is a critical concentration.

Has anyone ever looked into this over here? Seems that it has been
investigated on the other side of the pond:
http://gvgo.ca/mb/index.php?topic=433.msg1954#msg1954

--
Jeff
(cut "thetape" to reply)