Baby Watch 2025
High hopes!
A very big day here at the Hollands. Every morning when we would check on the garden there were more and more females! THEN, in a gesture all females can relate to at some point in their lives decided the vibes weren’t right and fell off. First we were sad, then we were mad and now we’re understanding.
With the heat cranking up over the weekend more and more females were dropping. I get it, I hate the heat too. I have to remind myself there’s a reason Georgia is know for growing peaches, blueberries, peanuts and other summertime favorites and NOT PUMPKINS. The biggest pumpkins are routinely grown in Michigan, Wisconsin and Northern California. Georgia? Nope.
My husband is definitely not one to be give up on this. There were many message board visits posing questions such about when to pollinate, what to do in the heat, etc. We upped our game and starting watching YouTube videos together before bedtime. Who said romance is dead? One night after watching videos posted by the very person we bought our seeds from he turned to me with steely resolve and said “I’m going to water the sh*t out of these plants. I’m going to give them more pumpkin juice (nutrients) and a shade cloth. That will fix it”.
And so he did, Watering 3-5 times a day today (this is Wednesday and it feels like 104 right now) and I think we finally have female that’s not going to drop. It’s firm and shiny!
VICTORY!
Once you have a female that’s in a good spot (at least twelve feet of vine) and looks like it’s not going to abort you zip tie it closed BEFORE the flower opens. You also need to zip tie a male before it’s opened so you can have your pollination time.
Pollinating the females isn’t ideal in such high temperatures, but the show must go on! Following the advice we received from the wise people at bigpumpkins.com we learned so much more about pollination than I ever learned in school.
Pollinating the females isn’t ideal in such high temperatures, but the show must go on! When the time comes to pollinate (in the next few days) we’ll put frozen water bottles around the female and vines to artificially create a cooler environment for the pollination to (hopefully) take. I guess we could also set the mood with dim lighting, Luther Vandross and a cocktail (not for the plant) if we really wanted to go all in. I don’t know how many days we’ll have to keep up this artificial environment and how often we have to swap out the water bottles, but I’m guessing it’s going to be at least a day.
As of today (Wednesday, June 25) we don’t have any open females so we’re officially on “baby watch”. I’ll share more soon! Follow us along on Instagram and my Facebook stories!
