Pumpkin update

My friend who gave me the giant pumpkin seed also gave seeds to other friends. Today he sent this letter to all of us (I am "the C family"....and I am a big loser of a pumpkin grower):

Growers-

Here is the low-down from California.

Two "S Family" pumpkin photos are attached. We have two vines growing and two fruits; however, the vines are battling powdery mildew, so the potentail fruit growth over the next two months is less than hopeful. Our photos have the basketball in them for scale. We have one decent-sized fruit that polinated itself very early while we were on vacation in early July; the second fruit is struggling and we do not have much hope for it over the rest of the season. (Our best fruit is on our no. 2 vine, based on its sun/shade growing placement.) It might be 30 to 40 pounds at this point.

The Zimmerman Family pumpkin is smaller than ours as of 8/13, but it actually has made up all kinds of weight/ground (compared to ours) over the past several days. The vine is very healthy and this fruit, has a a lot of potential. Zimmerman's photo has the tennis ball in it for scale and is a half a week to a week older than our photo. I viewed this pumpkin last night, and if I were betting, I would put money on their (white) pumpkin again to carry the show at the weigh-off.

The C Family's pumpkin is still a very small ovum with much potential. They had to go with a second-effort germination vine after "her dog stomped on the first plant." The C Family's pumpkin is on its way, and growing prominently in their front yard.

Hopefully we'll all see each other in Half Moon Bay in early October.

The report I had from Josey in the Czech Republic was that none of his seeds germinated, even in spite of some heroic efforts from his dad. It was probably just a bit too cold for both in-ground germination and in-paper napkin germination. However, they have a green house now and maybe next year will be their year to get going strong.

The Cham Family have two vines growing. One vine is in a decent location and the other one is trailing along in a secondary location. We do not have photos yet of this progress. We all here (in the bay area) suffer from a lack of free sunny space and ideal locations in our backyards. When I viewed these vines a week or so ago, the plants were doing OK, but there really was not much yet coming on with respect to fruit. Hopefully the fruit kick in soon and we will see them at a weigh-off.

That is all for now.

Master Pumpkin Man