On Fri, 27 May 2011 07:16:08 -0400, Frank
wrote:
On 5/26/2011 8:31 PM, David Hare-Scott wrote:
Wikipedia says pumpkins are a warm season crop and in the US most grow
in Illinois and are planted in July.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin
Now obviously the US is a big place and has different climates in the
north and south but in my experience pumpkins need a long growing
season to allow the fruit to reach full size and to ripen. Here they
grow between last frost and first frost, about 8 months, even so a
number are not full size or ripe as the vine keeps flowering and
setting fruit up until death. I grow table (not cattle) pumpkins and
in that time I get about 30 mature fruit (100kg, 250lbs) per vine. The
vine is quite large!
If it is too cold to plant until July how long can the season be, two
or three months? Does this mean that each vine only ripens the first
set fruit in the limited time? What kind of yield per vine do they
get?
Could somebody with relevant experience who is not too far from
Illinois shed some light please.
David
Reminds me of stories I've heard about huge pumpkins growing in Alaska:
http://www.gadling.com/2007/07/16/gi...ka-state-fair/
Assuming short growing season, Alaska's long summer days make up for it.
The get some incredible tomatoes up there, too.
But a 1000 pound pumpkin? In 2007 that was 'big'. Now it is just
an also ran-
2011 - 1810.5 pounds- Wisconsin
2009- 1725 pounds - Ohio
2007- 1689- Rhode Island
2006- 1502- Rhode Island
2005 - 1469- Pennsylvania
2004- 1446- Ontario, Canada
The biggest pumpkin I've ever touched was 600lbs, more or less-- These
1000 pounders boggle the mind. Interesting that the records for
the past 10 years are mostly all in the Northeast US & neighboring
Canada. [Wisconsin is north central- and there are a couple or Oregon
records- representing the Northwest]
I imagine part of it is the lack of intense heat as these vines soak
up gallons of water on a hot day. We must have the right balance of
heat & humidity to promote growth without stressing the plant.
Jim