I planted 6 Seminole Pumpkin seeds (got from SESE) in 2 hills back in April in South Florida. Meant to thin but never did. The vines ran and ran, and didn't want to climb. They keep setting roots as they go. We had a hellishly hot and relatively dry summer; during that time there were only male flowers. In the mornings, Cardinals, Orioles and other birds congregated to eat the bugs and caterpillars in the flowers and vines. We too had lots of bees and also a moth which were pollinating. I picked a lot of those male flowers and used them like squash blossoms - good in omelets, etc. Now that it's cooler I'm getting fruit set, but the vine is also dying - nematodes, I think. Two Pumpkins we've picked were pinkish-tan, 14 & 20 ounces only. Glad to hear we can still enjoy immature green fruit. Regarding a dog - one of our greyhounds was "caught" yesterday trying to carry off one of the pumpkins and playing with it like a ball! so it's not a perfect solution either.

Katkin, that is funny! I did the Seminole pumpkin party, and the remainder of the pumpkins, went to the friends that came to the party. It also went to neighbors. Miranda The Seminole can be picked at any stage but it is best when is mature. They break easy from the vine when ready. Mine turned different colors. Once harvested, let it sit for at least a week. I don't know about the calabaza, maybe Felix can help. Silvia

Kelly, The quick answer is yes, you can grow Lumina on a trellis. I've done it here, although not in several years. You can grow anything on a trellis as long as: a) the trellis is sturdy enough that it can support the weight of the vine and the fruit it produces, and b) you use slings to support the weight of the pumpkins or squash as they enlarge. I normally use either knee-high nylon stockings (or the legs cut off of pantyhose stockings) for melons and cheesecloth or burlap tied to the trellis for heavier pumpkins or winter squash. Some pumpkins and winter squash can hang from vines on trellises until they are fairly large, but without experience with any given variety, you won't know if the weight of the maturing pumpkin/winter squash will cause the vine to break or the pumpkin itself to snap off the plant, so it is better to support them all. The support might not seem necessary in general, but with the strong winds that often accompany thunderstorms here, it is better to be safe than sorry. Trellised melon and squash plants that normally can hold the weight of their own fruit may not be able to hang on to those fruit in higher winds. If the melon, or squash is not terribly high up off the ground, sometimes I just put an upside down 5-gallon bucket underneath the pumpkin or melon and it sits on top of that bucket as it enlarges. With some of the ones that bear smaller fruit, no support other than the trellis is needed. If you use trellises for melons that naturally form an abscission layer and fall off their vines when ripe, you do need to support them with a sling as falling to the ground any distance may cause them to crack open when they fall. Lumina will make pumpkins that weigh between 8 and 12 lbs. depending on how many pumpkins set per plant and how much rainfall/irrigation they receive. I'd sling them once they are getting larger than a large grapefruit. My question for you is why grow Lumina on the trellis when it produces much larger fruit than Pontimarron and Waltham? Both of them likely would be able to support the weight of their own fruit without slings, whereas Lumina would need support. With a winter squash that naturally vines into trees in its natural habitat, like Seminole, slings are not necessary. Their vines can support their weight, even when there are lots of squash on the vines and even when the winds get a bit high. Hope this helps, Dawn

Pat, Most years you can get a good crop from fall corn if (a) you can water it enough in August to get it established and (b) it matures before frost gets it. Usually we are frost free until late Oct. or early Nov., but here at our house we have had a killing freeze as early as Sept. 30th, though only about once a decade. I've linked an older thread with a sequential planting calendar for now through fall. The earlier date in the date range is for more northern parts of the state and the later date is for more southern parts of the state. As you can see, it is time now to plant fall corn. ChickenCoupe, Well, raccoons get into virtually everything. Let me give you a few examples: They climb the trees and pull down the hummingbird feeders, unscrew the bottoms and drink the nectar. They toss the feeder parts into the shrubs and you have to search for them, find them, wash them, put the feeders back together again and refill them. Then, if you forget to bring in the feeders at night, they'll do it all over again. They also climb the trees and pull down all regular bird feedes and empty them of seed. They get into the chicken coop if your husband forgets and leaves the door open. Then they'll kill your chickens and your favorite rooster and leave feathers and dead body parts scattered all over. If they can manage to find a way into your fenced chicken run, they'll pour out the chicken feed from the feeders and eat it and will dirty the water in the waterers. They get into the chicken coop if the door is open during the evening because the free-ranging chickens haven't put themselves up yet and they steal your eggs right out of the nests. (So do skunks and snakes.) They love to harvest your corn for you. Of course, since they're doing the work and harvesting it, they eat it. They don't even wait for it to be ripe. Heck, this year, they starting harvesting ears before the ears were completely pollinated/fertilized. The tear into the ears and nibble them. If the ear is not sufficiently ripe, the toss it on the ground, and tear up another ear. Sometimes you come outside in the morning and have 10 or 20 not-yet-ripe ears chewed and then thrown on the ground. Obviously since they harvest unripe corn and we cannot harvest it until it is ripe, guess how much corn you get once the coons arrive in full force? Practically none. They'll harvest and eat tomatoes, melons, plums, peaches and strawberries. If you have tiny chicks in a brooder cage and they can reach the brooder, they'll pull the legs off the chicks and eat the legs. Of course, you're left with the corpses of tiny dead legless chicks because they can't pull them through the 1/4" hardware cloth of the brooder cage. If you have barn kittens in an open building, they'll kill and eat them. Friends of ours lost two mama cats and their litters to the raccoons a few years ago. Other friends lost their barn cats and kittens last year and also the year before that. If you grow tomato plants or pepper plants in pots on your patio, you have to have cages and or deer netting wrapped securely around the entire plant in such a manner that the coons cannot put the netting up or down or off the plant ir they'll strip the sweet bell peppers and tomatoes off your container plants. If you have a lily pond, they'll get into it and get your fish and tear up your water lilies in their eagerness to get your fish. You may think you have two coons but I suspect you have more. We have killed 11 coons this summer, and yet, if I walk out into the yard any time between 9 p.m. and sunrise, I'll likely to see 2 or 3 or 4 at any given moment in time. We do everything we can to protect our animals and plants from them, but all that works for us is shooting them. My DH and DS have started asking me "Where are they coming from? How many more can there be?" I think the answer for us is they are coming from drought-plagued, drier parts of Texas and western OK because we've never had as many before as we have this year. One of our neighbors lives closer to the river than we do so he has even worse raccoon issues than we do. He was determined to keep the raccoons from getting his corn in 2006, which was the second half of the 2005-2006 drought. I think that year he had 4 rows of 100' each. He put out a live trap before his corn was ripe and started catching one coon in the cage every night. He shot each one. (This is important, because otherwise you might think it is the same raccoon coming back night after night.) For eighteen nights in a row he caught and shoot a coon. How much corn did he get that year? None. Nada. Zilch. The raccoons got every ear. Sometimes I beat the coons to the corn, sometimes they beat me. This year we caged the early corn after the coons showed up when it started silking and we got all of it after the cage went up. We intended to move the cage to the mid-season corn, but didn't get around to it in time, and the coons got every ear worth getting. It didn't deter them in the least that the corn was interplanted "Three Sisters Style" with Seminole pumpkins and Red Ripper southern peas. They'll tear holes in window screens on your screened porch so they can get onto it to search for food, even though we don't feed any animals on that porch and no food is there. (The coons are the main reason our former screened porch is now a sunroom with glass windows instead of mere screens.) They even climb up on patio furniture on the front porch, stand on the furniture and knock on the window sometimes trying to get you to feed them. (They must have found someone who will feed them if they do this. We never feed them and usually send our dog, Sam, outside to chase them off. He's a good coon-chasing dog.) We have neighbors who have outdoor dogs that stay out all the time and if they forget to bring in the dog food bowls at night, the coons get into it even though the dogs are in the fenced dog yard too. Some years the coons are more of a problem than others. This year they are a huge, huge, huge problem here. In the past we trapped and released them if we could, but it is extremely hard to handle a violent coon in a cage and then we have to drive about 20 miles to find a place far enough away from other peoples' gardens and farm crops to release one, so we just shoot them. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Thread with Sequential Planting Calendar