50+ Lifestyles

PUBLISHER’S CORNER

The Art of Growing Pumpkins

By Kari Smith

In the spring of 2009, my husband approached me with what he thought was going to be a wonderful experience. He wanted to use a corner of the yard for a garden, not just any garden, he wanted to plant pumpkins. I grew up taking care of a garden, so I wasn’t as excited as him but I was willing to try it under the stipulation that we could plant a couple of other vegetables.

We went to a local nursery store, he picked out his pumpkins, and I picked out cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. The next day we used a friend’s tiller, added some fertilizer and followed the instructions on the package precisely. It was a beautiful garden. A few weeks passed, and everything started sprouting. A few months later, we had pumpkin vines everywhere. We were starting to eat all of my vegetables, but the vines were starting to fail us. Halloween came and wen, and we never enjoyed a pumpkin.

Every year since then we have planted pumpkins, and we always have the best vines but sadly, we still have not enjoyed a full grown pumpkin. In full disclosure and to give my
husband some credit, we have had a couple of pumpkins reach the size of a softball – but truth be told, we have never enjoyed a great big orange pumpkin in all of our years of gardening.

That brings us to this year. We decided to try a new strategy (for obvious reasons). My sister lives in Minnesota and last year, her seven year old son (pictured right) with the help of grandpa planted some pumpkins. Other than watering them, they did not give them any TLC and they ended up with 16 beautiful pumpkins.

If you haven’t figured it out, YES, we drove to Minnesota and purchased the same seeds they used. We tilled our garden this spring, we watered, we fertilized and we watched and we watched and we watched. With great sadness, I need to report, nothing grew at all this year. We did have some great squash and cucumbers but not a pumpkin, not a vine, and not even a plant.