Seminole Pumpkin -- New Strain Available
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
10 years ago
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soonergrandmom
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoShelley Smith
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Old timey cornfield pumpkin seed
Comments (14)Jay, Did you check the flowers to make sure you had both male and female flowers? Every now and then I'll have a pumpkin plant that will set only male or only female flowers. I don't know why. Normally the male flowers set first, followed by the female ones but every now and then all I see is male flowers. With two plants, though, I'd be surprised if they both set only flowers of the same sex in your garden. With the female flowers, they are only viable and receptive to pollination on the first day they open, so if you are going to try hand pollinating them, catch them on that first day, preferably in the morning. Other than the nitrogen excess that George mentioned as a possibility, I can't think of anything else except this: --a lack of bees or other pollinators to accomplish the task of carrying pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers, or --excessively dry soil. I have found that in a period of the worst summer drought conditions, the plants can stop producing if the soil gets too dry. They do flower but fruit doesn't form. It is as if they somehow "know" there isn't enough available moisture to make the fruit grow so they don't set any. Last year I guess I wasn't watering the Seminole pumpkins enough in July and early August and they went about a month without setting any new fruit. Then I wised up and watered them heavily and they exploded into bloom and set fruit like crazy. George, What bean varieties are making you crazy? With me, it is Insuk's Wang Kong. I got flowers and beans the first year from seeds I got from you at the last spring fling we had at the park in OKC, but not the next year. I bought seeds of it from Remy's seed company this past winter and am going to try again. I will plant half my seeds in spring and save the other half to plant in summer for fall. On the beans that aren't flowering for you, is there a chance they are day-length sensitive and our day-length is too short? Dawn...See MorePumpkins!
Comments (27)Yellow leaves on pumpkins, as on virtually all other plants, are merely a sign of stress. As gardeners, it is our job to figure out what sort of stress is making the pumpkin leaves turn yellow. So, you know, when I see yellow leaves on pumpkin plants, the first question I ask myself is whether I see signs of any disease in addition to the yellow leaves. (Look at the leaf portion of the attached TAMU Cucurbit Problem Solver to see what various pumpkin diseases look like.) If I do see disease symptoms, I treat the plant for the disease, if there is a viable, organic treatment that will make a difference. If I don't see any signs of disease, I think about how dry or wet it has been and whether or not the plants might have gotten extremely dry or extremely wet. If plants get too dry, the leaves indeed can turn yellow. Usually if that is the only reason you're getting yellow leaves, you can increase the irrigation and remove the yellow leaves and you'll get tons of new green leaves. I only have had pumpkins get too wet in a couple of really wet years---2004 and 2007. Normally, they are such big, rampant, thirsty growers that their root systems suck up all the water they can get, but in a very, very, very wet spring, I've had them do poorly in slow-draining clay. I've never been one to fertilize the pumpkin plants once they are up and growing, but I say that with the following caveat: I work extremely hard on soil-building in fall and winter so that the pumpkins are growing in well-enriched soil that is high fertility and should be able to give the plants all the nutrients they need. My philosophy is to feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants, but it does take years to get your soil in that kind of fertile state if you start out with very poor soil, as I did. In our earlier years, I did have to fertilize the pumpkins regularly to keep them growing happily but now I don't as long as I plant them in areas that were given copious amounts of compost prior to planting. You have to be careful with the fertilizer and feed them something that doesn't have too much nitrogen, or you'll have big monster plants running all over the place and filling every inch of space you have but they won't be producing too many pumpkins because all their energy is going into leaf and vine production. Sometimes, too, I think we all tend to forget that with almost all plants, it is normal for the oldest leaves to reach the end of their normal life and to yellow and fall off the plant. So, if the yellowing leaves are the older leaves, that might be all you're seeing. Hazel, There can be a big problem if you lose too many leaves and pumpkins do set, so keep that in mind. What happens, then, is that as the pumpkins enlarge, there's not enough foliage to keep the sunshine from hitting the pumpkins directly and then they get sunscald (sun burn) and begin rotting. If I see that too many leaves are yellowing after pumpkins have formed, I'll give the plants a quick shot of a water-soluable fertilizer to push more leaf development and then I water them well to help those leaves grow. So, after you have tried to evaulate why the leaves are turning yellow, keep an eye on the pumpkins that do form. If you start getting little pumpkins, and you feel like there isn't enough foliage to keep the intense sunlight off of them, you always can feed the plants them to increase foliar growth. Sometimes when leaves near a pumpkin fruit die and there aren't any nearby loose vines I can rearrange to cover the pumpkin, I set a plastic lawn chair over it and let the chair shade it. Sometimes the solution that works isn't the first one that comes to mind. I've also used a patio table umbrella to shade a larger area that had several pumpkins that were in danger of sunburning, at least until the plant could make new foliage that would help shade the developing pumpkins. Like George said, often the first flowers don't form pumpkins, but the plants will keep flowering and will form pumpkins. Just wait patiently and it will happen. I've never yet had a nice, healthy (or even semi-healthy) pumpkin plant not produce pumpkins. If, by chance, you are in a part of Oklahoma that has had a lot of rain and a lot of cloudy days the last couple of months, that might be holding back your pumpkin plants a little. Unlike many of the plants we grow here, they tend to love the heat and sunlight and can be a little sluggish in rainy, cloudy periods. Or, if you keep getting both male and female flowers and no pumpkins, you may not have pollinators visiting your garden. If that is the issue, tell us, and we can link George's great thread that tells how to hand-pollinate squash. Larry, If they are otherwise healthy and disease-free, I don't worry too much about pale leaves because the plants produce well anyhow but in your case, since you've had so much rain, I think they might need some more nitrogen. At this point, it wouldn't hurt to try it. We rarely get too much moisture here, but when we do, I see yellowing like that sometimes. I feel like, as you improve your soil in that new area, your plants will do better. My Seminole pumpkin plants in the 2-year-old back garden in relatively unimproved soil are nowhere near as large, healthy or productive as the Seminole pumpkin plants in the front garden, whose soil has been improved every year since 1999. I hope to eventually get the back garden soil as healthy as the soil in the front garden, but until then, the pumpkin plants never will be as happy back there---especially in a drought year like this one. I really don't fight spider mites (as if I could). It seems like a battle you cannot win without heavy duty chemicals that I won't use. They're like grasshoppers here---so widespead in all the acreage around here that even if you can knock back their population a little, more come in every time the wind blows. I think the spider mite population peaked about two weeks ago and is dropping. They never really go away, but I think I'm seeing them spread more slowly now than they were earlier. Bon, I totally understand your frustration. It is so very hard to raise cucurbits organically here, particularly with all the pest and disease pressure combined with months of relentless heat and, often, drought. Some years I give up and let the squash bugs win. There's nothing wrong with that. When fighting them is more trouble than it is worth, just stop fighting them. However, do remember this---if you abandon living squash plants and let the squash bugs and borers reproduce freely in and on the plants, they are sowing the "seeds", so to speak, for next year's infestation. So, when you're done with the squash pest battle, yank out the plants and dispose of them so that they don't lay around and serve as a squash breeding ground from now until the first freeze. I either burn them or bag them up and put them in the trash. I don't compost plants infested with squash pests or diseases. I have thought long and hard about all the squash pests this year and for several years, and what I really would like to do would be to build a hoophouse, but using netting of some sort instead of plastic as the cover. I could grow squash inside of it, but without the hassle of lifting row covers to pollinate, and then replacing them, etc. Or, what if I made a new squash garden area and only planted squash there, and then sprayed those plants with a chemical pesticide? Would the world end? (sigh) I don't like using pesticides, but I am starting to wonder if that's the only way to be able to grow squash here without having to fight the squash pests tooth and nail. Dawn...See MorePumpkins?
Comments (8)I've grown three different kinds of cushaw: Green-striped Cushaw, Orange-Striped Cushaw and the White Cushaw that sometimes is sold under the name "Jonathan". All grew well, produced well, sent rampant vines everywhere, and were fairly tolerant of SVB damage, though not completely immune to it. I did not necessarily grow all 3 of them in the same year, but usually had at least 2 of them in the same year. For me, the green-striped ones produced gigantic, monstrously huge squash in rainy years, and the orange-striped and white ones were smaller. They all are good and are worth growing and eating, but none of them are as pleasing to my family's taste buds as the good C. moschata types like Seminole, Long Island Cheese and the various butternut types. Our favorite C. moschata is Seminole and we've grown it for maybe a decade now. It stores forever and the flavor is very, very good. Dickinson is another C. moschata that has excellent eating quality. I've grown maybe 10-15 different C. moschata types and Seminole has been superior to most all of them, but some of the others are really good too. My all-time favorite pumpkin for pumpkin pies is Winter Luxury Pie, but the squash vine borers get it every year even when I try to keep it covered with row cover to keep it safe from them, so I haven't grown it in years. One interesting development in the Seminole pumpkin world is that there now is a strain of Seminole that produces a significantly larger squash than the one that has been grown here on this continent for hundreds of years. Seed for the larger-fruited one (as well as the traditionally smaller fruited one) is available from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Sitting here and typing this, I was just reflecting on our favorite winter squashes that we have grown over the years, and it occurs to me that most of them have a buff-colored or tan-colored rind. Like George, I am well aware that most gardeners consider cushaw's flavor to be inferior to other types of winter squash, but we like it just fine. It could be that it develops a better flavor in our hotter, drier climate than in cooler, wetter parts of the country. For the first few years that we lived and gardened here, the SVBs didn't find us, so I could grow all the C. pepo and C. maxima types of summer and winter squash and pumpkins that I wanted to grow. Most years I grew 25-30 kinds, and we had the most amazing autumn decorations all over the place with all those pumpkins and winter squash piled up in beautiful arrangements along with colored seed heads (broom corn, amaranth, etc.). I just loved it. When I switched to Christmas decorations, all the winter squash and pumpkins went into cool storage to be used over the next few months. Once the SVBs found us and became such a problem, I dropped most all the C. pepos and C. maximas and mostly focused on the C. moschata types. Cushaws are the only C. agyrospermas that I still grow, and I don't necessarily grow them every year because they're such space hogs (as are the C. moschata types). Even for summer squash, I now grow an avocado squash that is C. moschata. I still plant the usual zucchini and yellow summer squash, but at some point every year we lose them to SVBs probably 8 years out of 10. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to now that we have a C. moschata that is used as a summer squash. I also will harvest and use Seminole as a summer squash some years, picking it from 1 to 3 days after the flower was pollinated and the fruit began to enlarge. It is nice and tasty, but isn't the same as the yellow squash and zucchini it replaces. Dawn...See MoreSquash/Pumpkins?
Comments (1)They are very different. Seminole produces a small teardrop-shaped or elongated teardrop-shaped pumpkin (its shape is highly variable) that weighs 3-4 lbs. and matures roughly 85-95 days after the fruit sets. Dickinsen produces a very large fruit that can top out around 40 lbs. and matures in 100-115 days depending on weather conditions. Dickinsen has the shape of a tall, sort of oblong pumpkin, not the more rounded shape of a carving pumpkin. Both have a buff-colored rind. There also is a "larger fruited" strain of Seminole, seed generally available for it from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange or Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, that produces a larger fruit than the original Seminole, but it still is a small fruit compared to Dickinsen....See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoShelley Smith
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoMacmex
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
10 years agolast modified: 9 years agohazelinok
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years agosoonergrandmom
7 years agohazelinok
7 years agoMacmex
7 years agoAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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7 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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