Pumpkins in the garden

I think most people we talk to about the garden are super surprised to hear how far away it is. The garden is exactly one hour away, so every Saturday morning around 7 am we drive out to the garden. We talk excitedly about what we might find out there, things we learned the previous week, things we want to do, and heaven. Yes, that's kind of an odd subject to throw in there, but like I said, it's a long drive. Most of the time it's been me, James, and my brother but there have been a couple of times when it was only James and my brother, or James and I. Whoever it is, we always have a lot to talk about. When we finally get to the garden we ooh and ahh about what has changed, and then we get excited about what has grown. My brother gets super excited about his cherry tomatoes. James gets super excited about his pumpkins.

We have five pumpkins growing very nicely, and two more that are well on their way. We have two different kinds of plants; one is a triple treat pumpkin plant and the other is the standard jack-o-lantern plant.

Baby Pumpkin #1

Baby Pumpkin #2

The triple treat pumpkin plants are just as their name suggests. You can use these pumpkins to carve, you can use them to make pies, and you can use them to dry their seeds to eat. The jack-o-lantern pumpkin plants are only for carving and not suggested for any eating. We first purchased the triple treat pumpkin seeds and planted them and waited, but after a few weeks we realized that something had actually dug up our pumpkin seeds and ate them. So we tried planting a few more, and sure enough the following week we saw that the ground had been dug up and something had eaten the seeds. Just to be safe, we gave it a few more weeks before going to the store to purchase the jack-o-lantern starter plants and we planted those in a different place in the garden.

It took a little while for the plants to become accustomed to the new soil, and I didn't think they were going to make it, but sure enough they did and very quickly they started to stretch out their tendrils and begin to flower. In fact, it wasn't long at all until new little pumpkins had started to emerge.

However, one day, while picking zucchini, James noticed that one of the zucchini plants had little vines on it. I knew that wasn't possible and so began our search to figure out what type of plant it was. Perhaps it was a leftover plant from something that was planted the year before (before we were there), or perhaps it was a weed in disguise (we got a lot of those things). We decided to wait it out and within the next week it too had a pumpkin starting to grow on it. That's when we figured out that one of the triple treat seeds must have been sheltered by the zucchini plant and was able to grow without anything eating it. And truth be told, I think there are two triple treat plants next to our zucchini. The only trouble we have is trying to find out which one is the triple treat and which one is the jack-o-lantern, because when we transplanted the jack-o-lantern starter plants we put one in the front of the garden and one in the back where the triple treats originally were. Did I lose you yet? :)

I know for sure that this one is a jack-o-lantern plant since it is right up front:

What a great looking pumpkin

And these ones I am not sure which is which:

Regardless of which is which, I just have to tell you how excited James is for these pumpkins. He is thrilled to pieces, and I love, love, LOVE watching him get so excited about them each week. He has been known to drop whatever he is doing in the garden and rush over to the plants whenever anyone mentions there is a new pumpkin growing. He can hardly wait to carve them for Halloween, and I can hardly wait to watch him pick them from the vine, like a kid in a candy store. Our only trouble is that they stop watering the garden either on the first frost, or the first of October, which ever comes first, so we aren't too sure how long pumpkins last off the vine before cutting into them. I'll have to do some research on that, but for now it sure is fun watching them grow and watching James get so excited about them each week.