Write one leaf about growing pumpkins.
I have cultivated some skill over the years at growing pumpkins in the most unlikely places. With a small backyard, this is necessary. Where we live now the pumpkins from my garden will never contend for largest or heaviest, or even most impressive in Pennsylvania, but give me an eight foot plot of crappy soil and I’ll line the railings of our little deck with flickering jack-o-lanterns carved by my own hand and raised in my own patch.
The truth is, however passionate about pumpkins I may be, I’m still very new to raising my own. I grew my first in the family garden. There is a photo of me as a child proudly balancing a tiny pumpkin I had just plucked from amongst the dried husks of the leaves which had hidden and protected it all summer long. I mark this moment as the point that I fell in love with tiny pumpkins and even tinier jack-o-lanterns, and no Halloween has passed since that I have not carved a ghostly face on a tiny pumpkin and called it “Boo”.
But it was only a few years ago I found myself, for the first time, with a backyard of my own. Circumstance prevented a large garden, but there was a small plot of disturbed soil and weeds, in full sun and an inconvenient distance from the hose, where I could plant a small patch if I was willing to let the pumpkin vines trail out of the garden and into the grass.
A few years earlier, while still living in Vermont, I had discovered an excellent guide to growing pumpkins — The Perfect Pumpkin by Gail Damerow — and I set about rereading it in preparation for my first solo adventure into the world of Cucurbita. I planted my seeds inside. The first group grew too fast and were too leggy to plant, but the second round yielded two dozen excellent seedlings, six of which quickly rooted in my rough and tumble garden and began to grow at a rate I was totally unprepared for. I credit the bees for pollenating the flowers (they loved the patch) even though I dutifully followed the instructions to manually pollenate some of the blossoms.
The summer was hot and wet and the vines thrived. I hauled many buckets of water during the dry spells and carefully mowed around the vines as they snaked out into our yard, interfering with our ad hoc badminton court. By late July we already had several pumpkins plumping up and showing color, but even then new ones were appearing on the longer vines. A local groundhog family had taken interest in the bristly leaves and I’m sure I entertained my neighbors on more then one occasion by bursting out of my house and racing up the yard after spotting a groundhog staring hungrily at one of my prized orbs.
By the end of September, I had quite the collection of pumpkins lined up on the porch. Only one got anywhere near the size of a basketball, and the smallest three barely made it past softball size. But they were destined to be jack-o-lanterns, one and all. They survived wet weather, dry weather, the feet of little children playing badminton and my own inept gardening skills. On Halloween, they flickered as brightly as any other, save the one sacrificed for Pumpkin Bread. He was delicious.
(encouraged by writeoneleaf)
