Meet the CONTRAPTION
I know, I know. I’m late with our updates. This time of year, we are slammed with our plant sale on top of our weekly deliveries, and I haven’t stayed on top of it! We’re also getting our mobile farmer’s market together for a June launch and that’s been turning the dial a little bit more on the stress-o-meter.
Thankfully we find refuge in our garden.
Jonathan planted the seeds in a new seed starting mix. The experts over at bigpumpkins.com suggested Fox Farms Happy Frog potting soil. So we bought Fox Farms Happy Frog potting soil.
At this point, if they suggested wearing all orange and singing ‘This is Halloween’ at midnight every night while chewing tin foil and turning counter-clockwise in the middle of the garden, we would probably try it.
With the seeds tucked in to their 4 -inch pots filled with their fancy dirt, we watered and put them on the heating pads.
On March 26, we had a seedling!
We have the seedlings started in a spare room that holds his vintage Halloween collection. I think the seedlings were drawing inspiration from the many paper mache pumpkins because they TOOK OFF. In just 5 days we had growth!
Between the heating mats, the grow lights, the location of the mini greenhouse in the room and the temperature of our house, 77 degrees is the sweet spot.
Within about 2 weeks the heat mats were turned off and the plant was repotted into a gallon pot.
Then the plants would take a field trip outside on the front porch for the day to begin the hardening off process.
As of today (April 13) the sun is zapping the plants and they’re in the shade on the back porch. I’m in charge of checking on them and making sure they’re not wilting in the heat. I haven’t been this nervous since the first time I babysat when I was 13.
Speaking of sun, let me introduce you to something I “lovingly” call THE CONTRAPTION.
BEHOLD-THE CONTRAPTION.
We’ve been together since 1995 and nothing stirs terror in my soul more than when he says “I have an idea and it SHOULD work”. This time the statement was followed by a lot of staring at the sky while stroking his beard while standing in the pumpkin patch, a measuring tape (I was in on that one too), searches on Amazon, more staring at the sky at different times of day, and finally an extension of the main garden with a gate to keep out any dogs that may run loose and potentially stomp the vines.
Giant pumpkins hate the baking sun and high humidity we have in Georgia. Hence the Contraption. It’s a shade cloth with clothesline through the grommets and the line threaded through metal poles that are used to hold up outdoor lights. His thinking is we can pull this forward and back as needed when the sun is blazing and it will help to keep it a little cooler.
Currently, the contraption is not all the way up and in time out. I thought we had a visitor in the backyard who upset Jon but no, that was just my husband letting the Contraption know what he thinks of its Mama.
That’s the latest on the pumpkin, we’re shooting for planting it in the ground before we (hopefully) get some rain and cooler weather in about 2 weeks. I’m going to keep up videos of our garden and giant pumpkin growing adventures on my TikTok account, @janisholland. I’ll occasionally share videos on our IG/Facebook but I’m going to try and keep that mainly fruit and veggie deliveries and our mobile market trailer.
