Well, I've never grown a pumpkin before so this should be interesting. Probably a dumb question but when will they turn orange and be ready to pick? Early October I assume? Judging by their current size in mid-July they are going to be massive in Oct. BTW, it turns out that my neighbor planted them in her garden so it must have been transferred to my flower bed by an animal. These plants are voracious...they took over her whole garden. The leeks she had growing there a few weeks ago are M.I.A.

Ummm, I'm just seeing this, wonder if you've moved your plant yet..... I'd go with the cow, Neil...compost (aged plant remains) or composted manure. Rhubarb is happy in slightly to moderately acid soil. The ph of most mushroom compost is more alkaline, most has lime added. If you are going to use the mushroom product, it's better spaded into the soil in small amounts or use it for things liking a more neutral to sweeter soil, not the acid lovers. (little tip on the mushroom compost, it can be high in salts too and may damage tender seedlings of any kind if used in too high quantity even spaded into a bed. it's not a bad product, you just need to be more careful with it than say, composted steer manure) One of the very few things I pick up at Home Depot is composted steer manure blend (aged manure, aged wood chips). I just now finished putting a bag as a top dressing around 4 Pia hydrangeas...was dry enough to make it easy to work with, no odor, no rocks. Price has gone up, I think it was $1.12/ cu. foot bag, used to be 98 cents. :-)

Glo - Thanks for reassuring me! I hope your move is awesome! My husband has wanted to move us to Colorado for years and hasn't managed to quite convince me yet, although I think it's absolutely wonderful there. LOL So, Winter Solstice is the same everywhere? (LOL)... I guess you're seeing how little I know... Nancy - Thanks for the tip! I am gonna have to watch the lead hand myself as I way oversowed my cantaloupes this fall. The poor babies are fighting each other and giving me 2 to 5 inches fruits that don't look like they're EVER going to full ripen. I will be much more careful in the future. I'll try to not get TOO excited when I go to plant. LOL Carrie - Wow! That's some really good info. That's exactly the kind of thing I was worried about. I'm grateful for the heads up. Liz - LIZ!!! Hey, girl! Fancy meeting you here and there and now here! hee hee... The whole last paragraph of what you wrote is exactly what is concerning me. I know that I personally wear shorts through-out almost the whole winter except for those few crazy days that we see. 50's or what have you is not cold to me... We do get the occasional freeze, but then a week or two later at most you could have a 70+ degree high! All this in the same few days / weeks / months... it's SO crazy! Oh, and if they're having a plantswap around the 8th of December as well, I sure want to know as I'll be out that way. :-) Blessings, Angela

We grow a couple different varieties of white pumpkins each season and have grown Lumina....they can be a little touchy some seasons and we stopped growing them and moved onto better. Some of my favorite...Cotton Candy...they are nice round basketball sized pumpkins that grow on semi bush vines. We have grown these each year for past 6 yrs and always get good production. Also last year we began growing a white pumpkin called Valenciano...they are nice creamy white pumpkin that will get to be about 10 -12 pounds. They have quickly become my favorite and are pretty easy to grow and you get quite a few pumpkins off each vine. So don't give up on the white pumpkins...there are some better varieties out there. One thing also we have found that growing them next to corn or tall grass gives them the protection they need from the sun scorching them. Can find seeds thru Johnny's Seeds, Rupps Seeds or Reimer Seeds...