Waltham Butternut

A new header and a new pumpkin post courtesy of H from The Colour H. Check out her stuff at the link  to the right under Good Stuff. Good stuff it is too. Thanks H.

These are Waltham Butternut developed in Waltham Massachusetts. I bought the seeds through Diggers. All's well so far but with a scorcher of a week coming up I'm afraid they might split like last year. I've put up some shade and I'm concentrating on even watering so hopefully they'll stay intact this year.

Put up a strong trellis and grow some next year. I concreted in 75mm x 50mm steel posts and strung them with steel wire around 2.5mm in diameter. They would work well strung between patio posts provided your patio faces north or east.



Pumkin Calamity

I spoke too soon, my pumpkins have suffered a disaster! After a 38 degree day yesterday about half the fruit split, which means I needed to pick them before their time. I've experienced this splitting of fruit wth tomatoes when they get uneven watering. I think I've been watering the pumpkins fairly evenly but maybe too much. About a week of low thirties then a couple of scorchers hasn't helped. Oh well, a couple of willing friends took some of the split fuit off my hands so none will go to waste

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Perpendicular Pumpkins

I realised I haven't given an update for a while on the pumpkins that give my blog it's name. In short they're going pretty well for the garden's first season. This is the only way to grow pumpkins in a small garden. Not only does it save room but having the fruit on wires stops the bugs getting into the soft spot that can occur where the fruit rests on the ground. The vines are just starting to die off and once they do completely I'll be harvesting. Also you can just see the powdery mildew spots on the leaves. I could try to slow this up with a diluted milk spray but I'm not sure I'll bother this late in the season. Pumpkins always get powdery mildew towards the end and I think it just part of the plants life cycle.

Butternut Cross Pollination?

I mentioned a post ago that the butternuts had only produced female flowers. Since then some males have opened and i've hand pollinated some of the females. The wierd thing is a few of the fruit that I expected to drop off are still there and growing nicely. I've done a bit of research and it seems that butternuts, zucchini's and Goldn Nuggets are part of the same species of curcurbits and will cross pollinate. As usual there's a bit contradictory info on the web but most seem to agree that this can happen. Apparently the fruit wont be affected in the first year but will probably produce mutants from any seed saved.

The two together shown below are about 100mm long and the bigger single is about 150mm long. They would have dropped off by now if they hadn't been pollinated by something. Unless I missed a male flower, but I don't think so, pumpkin flowers are pretty hard to miss.



Pumpkin Fruit

The Golden Nugget bush pumpkins have set fruit with some help from hand pollination by me. They may have been pollinated anyway but those bees just can't be trusted.

Meanhwile the Butternuts are climbing nicely. Only female flowers at the moment so I'm feeling a bit impatient as usual.



Perpendicular Pumpkins

The Butternut pumpkins have been planted in the no-dig section of the garden. The method to do this is to dig a hole down into the straw/manure layers until you reach the moist composted material. I then fill this hole with a mix of soil and compost.

The seeds go into this and around a week later the pumpkins are on their way to perpendicularity.