GIANT PUMPKIN TOO HEAVY TO CARRY! (2023)

Introduction

How much did our giant pumpkins weigh? Join us to hear how we were able to get it loaded to go weight it, and the actual weight. We'll also be doing some cleanup on our pumpkin plot in the backyard garden and start more pumpkin seeds for a fall planting.

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Content

So we took it to the farmer's market, put it on the scale and this one ended up weighing: what's up lazy, dog fam hope everybody out.

There is having an incredible day.

You know.

What's gonna happen later today, it's gonna rain, hopefully not until about two hours from now, but it's gonna rain again.

Today we got that crazy flood a couple days ago it rained again yesterday it's gonna rain, a good portion of the day.

So there's not a whole lot.

We can do in the garden right now, our soil drains pretty well, but it's kind of too wet to do a whole lot around here.

So we're going to continue with our pumpkin theme on this video we're going to try to get this plot here behind us.

Where we had our pumpkins gonna try to get that cleaned up.

We were able to go away, those giant pumpkins, I'm gonna tell you what those ended up weighing and then hopefully we're gonna go to the greenhouse and start some more pumpkins that we can grow for the fall.

So if you missed that last video, where we harvested over 100 pumpkins out of this little 30 by 35 plot here I'll put a card up top, so you can go check that out and in that last video we still had a couple out here, but you'll notice that they're now gone that giant pumpkin.

That was sitting on top of that platform right.

There is now under the barn I'll show you that in a minute talk about how much that one weighed, but before we do that, we need to work on a little bit of cleanup here.

So we can get.

This plot turned over and hopefully get a cover crop planted here soon.

So, as we've been cleaning up some of these spring and early summer crops, we've been talking a lot about crop sanitation and the importance of crop sanitation on some of our past videos.

How crucial it is to get that diseased plant material out of the garden? Don't leave it in there, don't till it in the soil, because that can just create persistent issues over the long term, so, for instance, with our summer squash and our cucumbers, we pulled up all that plant material, got it out of the garden.

Put it in the woods.

Put it in the burn, pile put, it yard chopped it up with the lawnmower.

We don't want it in the garden now, with this pumpkin plot here behind me, it's a little bit of a different situation, because there is so much plant material here.

If you just had a little pumpkin plot raised bed or just a tiny little plot with a few pumpkin plants, I'd recommend just going in there and pull them by hand getting them out of there.

It would take me quite a while to pull all this material out of here by hand and with the rain coming.

I don't really have time to do that today, so we're going to use the assistance of the lawnmower to help us get some of this material out of here and get this cleaned up now, when we're mowing some things like cover crops, we want to chop and drop all that plant material and leave it on the garden plot, and that's why I use that little baffle on my mower, so it doesn't blow it everywhere.

It just kind of chops.

It drops it mulches it right where it is in this case with this pumpkin plot.

I don't want to do that.

I want to try to blow all this stuff out of here, so I'm not going to use the baffle on my mower and I'm going to try to strategically blow it all out of here in that direction.

Over there now I've got berry drip tape in this plot, as well, four or five lines that I also have to worry about, and I got to get those up as well.

It'd be kind of hard to pull up now with all these pumpkin vines everywhere.

So my plan is come in here and mow.

It relatively close.

Try to blow as much of that plant debris out of here, as I can then I'll pull up the tape and I'll probably come back behind it and just really really scalp it down once it's scalped down, then I can come in here with the wheel, hoe kind of rake out any weeds that are in there and get it nice and clean so that we can plant a cover crop whenever it's dry enough to do so.

So I'm gonna go grab these few pieces of wood and bricks that I use for my giant pumpkin platforms get those out of here we'll get the mower and we'll start working on getting this cleaned up all right, all right! All right! I tell you what there's nothing like the smell of a big cloud of rotten pumpkin fumes when you're mowing down an old pumpkin plot, but we got it so that's about as good as we're going to get with the mower alone, still a good ways away from being ready to plant a cover crop.

So next thing I need to do is come in here rake out some of those vines or real low the ground.

The mower wouldn't get we'll hoe, it rake everything out and we probably will need to till it one time before we put that cover crop in I'd, say another 30, 45 minutes worth of work another day and we'll be ready to plant something else here.

So now, let's go underneath the barn, where we've got all those pumpkins that we harvested on the last video talk about what we're going to do with all these pumpkins and I'll.

Tell you what those big ones weight.

So we got a lot of pumpkins underneath here about run out of room to put them all.

We got our wheelbarrow full of coals right.

There, chickens are getting a pumpkin a day, they're enjoying that.

So far got our two big boys right.

There got our fairy tale pumpkins over there on that makeshift firewood, rack I made and then all our jade night pumpkins.

I had some leftover wheat straw bales, underneath the barn here, so I unstacked them laid them out like that got them sitting on there.

They wouldn't quite all fit on there.

I didn't have enough straw bales, those pumpkins are pretty small, so we put the rest of them on the very top of our storage rack over there.

So when we posted a picture of these pumpkins on our facebook and instagram pages, we had a lot of people asking.

What are you gonna do with all those pumpkins we're long ways from halloween, and if you watched that last video, you might have been wondering the exact same thing so for those giant pumpkins we're gonna collect the seeds from those see how many seeds we have make sure they germinate well and then, as promised, we'll probably put them on our website later this year or maybe early next spring, but for these two types, the fairy tale and the jade night, these are eaten pumpkins.

So both of these are really really tasty.

These right here store for a long long time, because this is a c machado type.

They see maxima types like this, we usually get them to store three to four months.

Sometimes longer just depends on the pumpkins.

Not all of them will store that long, but we can usually get a decent percentage of them to store for a while.

So we will be eating some of these making pumpkin pies pumpkin bread, all kind of good tasty treats with the pumpkin meat inside these pumpkins, but obviously we can't eat that many pumpkins, so we'll eat what we can we'll give away a few.

If somebody wants some pumpkins to eat and then hopefully these should store in october and abram always likes to have him a little pumpkin sale.

So hopefully come october, we'll still have several of these left and he can do him a little roadside pumpkin stand now, as I mentioned earlier, for these fairytale pumpkins here, I'm really not worried about those making it to october those store really really well.

Sometimes you can get a year or more out of those, so those should be just fine.

These jade night pumpkins.

I do worry about a little bit.

Last year we had the speckled hound variety and we did lose a few of those before we got to october now I didn't have them on straw bells last year.

I just had them on the ground here and this ground and heavy rains can get wet sometimes, and I think that caused some of them to rot, so I'm hoping putting them up on these strawbells like this- will keep them all nice and dry and happy and they'll store much longer for us and now for the moment, hopefully, you've all been waiting for what are these big boys right here way? Now, on that last video, we asked everybody to guess what each of these pumpkins weighed and if anybody got it right, the first person to get it right, I'd send them a free lazy, dog farm hat.

Now this video is being filmed before that video actually airs.

So I haven't seen all the guesses yet, but I've assumed we got a decent amount of them and thank everybody for playing along.

So we'll start with this giant field pumpkin here now this one I was able to get it out of the garden pretty easily and get it loaded up, take it to town and weigh it.

So this giant field pumpkin here ended up coming in at 41 pounds.

So a long ways away from the 200 pound potential that these seeds have but hey 41 pounds isn't too bad and at least we've got kind of a baseline next year.

We know we got to try to grow one bigger than 41 pounds and now for this big boy here this atlantic giant pumpkin.

Now I showed you on that last video.

I wasn't able to budge this thing off the ground where it was sitting now.

A few weeks ago I was able to move it a little bit.

I told you on the last video that my buddy thomas, who was a collegiate baseball pitcher.

He was able to pick it up a few weeks ago.

Well, he come over.

Yesterday I called him.

I said: let's go take this pumpkin town see what it weighs well, he grabbed hold to it and he couldn't pick it up anymore.

It had gained some weight.

He said this thing is a good bit heavier than it was a few weeks ago.

So we had to improvise, and my brilliant wife said: hey: why don't y'all use this old bed sheet, make a cradle and then y'all can kind of tag team it and then pick it up.

So, instead of us, dumb men trying to use just brute strength to pick this thing up and probably hurting ourselves, we went with the wife's.

Much smarter idea was able to kind of rotate it a little bit get a sheet underneath it.

We kind of double folded.

The sheet and I picked up a one in thomas picked up on the other end.

We got it in the back of the truck, got it to town, so we could weigh it and if you want to see us actually picking this thing up, we'll have a reel on our instagram account.

You can go see that there, so we took it to the farmers market.

Put it on the scale and this one ended up weighing 187 pounds.

I was really hoping was gonna, get to 200 pounds with it, but 187 pounds.

Definitely the biggest pumpkin I've ever grown still a long ways off from the 1500 pound potential that these seeds have and will still have they're not going to lose that potential just from one generation.

So we'll try again next year.

Maybe we can get closer to 500 next year.

I think I really need to devote a single plot to the giant pumpkin, so I can prune them and have plenty of room to work with there, but I'm not mad about growing a 187 pound pumpkin.

A lot of folks at the farmer's market said it was the biggest pumpkin they had ever seen.

So that made me kind of proud and uh.

It was fun to kind of take it around town, show it around a little bit.

So if you did guess the weight for either one of these the field pumpkin at 41 or the atlantic giant at 187.

I'll find you a comment reply to it.

You can send us an email with your address and I'll get your hat out in the mail, I'm hoping we did get a winner for each of these and lots of good guesses.

In addition to having a lot of people asking what we're going to do with all these pumpkins, we also had a lot of people asking.

Why do you grow them in the spring as opposed to the fall? Is it easier to grow them in the spring? Well, yes, it is easier to grow them in the spring.

Now we're going to grow, some fall pumpkins again this year, like we did last year, but pumpkins are easier to grow in the spring, because temperatures are cooler, pest and disease pressure is lower, and so that's why we grow our eaten pumpkins in the spring and then those will store for several months for us on into the winter.

So we have a good long-term food source with those pumpkins in the fall which we'll be planting in the minute.

We grow more kind of fun, pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, decorative pumpkins things like that.

So if you have a long growing season where you can grow a spring crop and a fall crop of pumpkins, I'd recommend doing you eating pumpkins in the spring, that's going to be your sure bet and then doing the fun pumpkins in the fall, where you might not have quite as much success now in making that transition from spring pumpkins to fall.

Pumpkins.

Let's talk about what we're going to be planting here now.

Last year I grew fall pumpkins, I think.

Maybe, for the first time we grew a variety called polar bear and then we grew a jack-o'-lantern variety.

I can't remember the name of it.

The jack-o'-lantern variety didn't do very well for us at all.

I think it had something to do with the plot it was in.

It was kind of nutrient poor from our soil test.

We got done later, but the polar bear pumpkins did pretty good for us.

It wasn't a home run producer.

I think we ended up getting 15 big white pumpkins.

Out of that plot.

There made some nice porch decorations for fall and abram sold a few of them, which he really enjoyed.

So we're going to try the polar bear pumpkins again this year got some seeds for those probably more seeds than I'll need this year.

If I went ahead and got a pack of a hundred of these happy with those last year, so we're gonna try those again this year, maybe we can grow some even bigger ones.

Now this seed packet got a little wet yesterday in the rain.

I think it'll be all right, but this variety here, which you can't really see, is called cargo.

This is an orange jack-o-lantern type supposed to make a nice big kind of upright jack-o-lantern.

This one also has some powdery mildew resistance, with which we can certainly use when growing fall.

Pumpkins so excited about that one, and then this one never grown warty pumpkins before, but we're gonna give it a try.

This one's called warty goblin got this one from here seeds, we're gonna, give that one a go as well, so we got three different varieties, more ornamental varieties that we're going to try for fall.

Now.

Last year we direct seeded our fall pumpkins, and I can't remember exactly when we planted them, but it seemed like it was maybe early august this year we're going to transplant our pumpkins, so we're going to start them here in the greenhouse in a minute and then hopefully we can get an earlier start this year.

Last year we were cutting it pretty close, getting those things harvested out of the garden plots right before halloween, so hopefully we'll give ourselves a little more time this year to work with, we can let those pumpkins get even bigger.

So as we always do we're going to start out by getting some pro mix here in this prop tec, 162 tray get all these sales filled.

What's good seed starting mix here this stuff's a little dry, so we'll probably have to wet it down good.

Before we make some indentions and plant, our seeds might need a little bit more all right.

So our sails are full we're going to wet it down.

Good, then we'll give it a minute.

Let that water kind of soak through there and then we'll wet it down again and we'll hit it one more time, just for good measure I'll go ahead and make some indentions in these sails here and since pumpkin seeds are pretty big, I'm going to push down there pretty good make some decent sized indentions put these seeds and I've already got my plant labels here got a lot more polar bear seeds than I do, the other two varieties, I'm kind of working my way backwards.

I think I got 30 seeds of the warty, so three rows should do me on that, and I've got 30 seeds of the cargo.

So three rows should do me on that and we'll see how far we get with the polar bear there.

Now these seeds are treated which doesn't bother me because we're not going to be eating these anyway, we're going to be using them for more ornamental purposes, but I think you can get untreated seeds of this polar bear variety.

If that's something you're particular about.

I think I may just go ahead and plant all these polar bear seeds.

I think I'm gonna.

Do a whole plot of these bad boys.

They were really really popular last year, so we'll go ahead and plant.

All we've got here that worked out almost just perfect we're going to have one lane here where we have seed starting mix and we're not going to have any seeds, but that's all right, the rest of the tray will be full of seeds.

Let's get our cargo seeds in these next three lanes.

These are treated as well.

These are some big old seeds here, bigger than the polar bear.

These might end up, making some sure enough big pumpkins.

Well, it looks like they gave us a good many more than 30 seeds.

Some will back that one up right there and we will end up filling this empty row right here and with pumpkin seeds since they're so big.

Even if I've got a few extra left over, I usually don't like to double plant these cells, just because the seeds are so daggone big, so we just happen to have two seeds left over there and then.

Lastly, we've got our warty goblins.

Here, I'm really excited about these.

I think the kids are going to really really like these I've seen warty pumpkins, but never grown them, so I figured now was as good a time as any give them a shot.

Well, that worked out almost perfect, too got only one seed left over so now, we'll top these babies with perlite like we always do get them covered, and we certainly don't need a heat mat at this time of year.

They should germinate pretty quick, the greenhouse here just with outside temperature.

It's warm in here right now, but it's not overbearing.

It's not so hot in here.

You can't stand to be in here now, we'll just water, those seeds in good and so with our little micro dosing system that we've been using.

With that little siphon mixer connected between our spigot and our water hose.

We are feeding every single time we water at a very low dose.

So we've got some of that agar thrive in the bucket there.

It's sucked up through that little black tube and comes out our water hose mixed with that water at a 16 to 1 ratio, and so we're feeding these guys.

Even when they're still seeds and haven't germinated, yet I found it doesn't hurt anything at all doesn't inhibit germination.

It just starts putting some nutrients in that sterile seed starting mix and keeps a nice constant supply of nutrients there.

So we can have some very, very healthy transplants when it comes time to put these puppies in the ground.

Now with these fall pumpkins, which, as I mentioned, we're growing for ornamental purposes- we're not going to eat these, although I think you can eat these polar bear, pumpkins, I'm not going to be as rigid about staying organic with my spray program.

I know the pest pressure is going to be high.

I know the disease pressure is going to be high, we'll probably start spraying them with some azera once we transplant them.

But if I see things are getting bad, I will go to a synthetic product because, like I said we're not eating these anyway, it's not going to matter a whole lot, probably still going to stay organic with my fertilizer program with the nature, safe and the agri-fiber, because that works so well on our spring pumpkins that I'm just gonna kind of repeat the process with these fall pumpkins as far as pests and diseases go, I will go non-organic if I have to so.

Hopefully we have similar or better success with the polar bears compared to what we did last year, and hopefully the warty and the cargo jack-o-lanterns give us a few nice fruits as well, if you're growing any fall pumpkins in your garden this year.

Let me know in the comments below which varieties you're going to be planting and if you're an experienced fall, pumpkin grower and you have some good tips.

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