Day 75

Note to self: when cutting a pumpkin off the vine, don't cut the vine in half. That was a long one too!

Today's harvest. I think I will remove seeds from one very soon, and I'll wait a week for the other to let it ripen a bit first. Don't worry, whomper is still out there. I can't bring myself to harvest the biggest one.

Day 74

Cleaned out the corn patch, found two pumpkins hidden in there. I think they enjoyed the shade.

Day 71

Seed Sproutin' Operation

Assassin Bugs

Unplanned Sunflower

Day 70

Well, Clone #1 is not looking too hot! Looks like I'll be relying on generation 2 via seeds...

Day 67

Time to attempt the creation of Clone #1. Here's the target (the black box)

Here's Clone #1 after cutting the vine from the parent:

Here's Clone #1 after transplanting in a fancy new spot:

Here's the biggun:

Day 64

Extracted ~150 full-sized seeds. I have enough seeds that I can try a few methods of creating plants out of them. I'll put some in the freezer, some in a greenhouse, and some directly in my raised garden. Something is bound to grow! I'm not sure how tricky it is to utilize fresh seeds.

I also need to transplant my (potential) clones. It's going to be quite a task! There are so many roots to deal with. Also, my motivation to multiply via the clone method is low now that I have a few thousand seeds at my disposal.

Day 61

Going to see if I can extract viable seeds from this sucker.

Friday or Saturday I will try and transplant some clones. Whether or not they will survive after cutting the vine from the parent... we shall see.

Day 60

Day 57

Made some progress. Cut a few lanes with the ol' weedeater, directed a bit of traffic (vine-traffic, that is), and gave everything a good watering.

Day 56

Just got back from the business trip. Katie's smuggled photo showing a supposed pumpkin has been confirmed -- pumpkins are indeed on the vines. Now, if I can only extract some seeds before the end of July...

Day 54

I'm out of town, but the following photo was smuggled to me via the Internet Underground (email from Katie)

Day 46

The cloning begins. Going with Vine-Burying-Cutting for now. I couldn't make myself cut and go the root-hormone route.. not til things get a bit bigger. Besides, I killed every tomato clipping that I tried that on. I'm also starting to think I can get more plants this way anyhow -- I did not realize that pumpkin plants tend to drop roots so readily.

I'm hoping that by using containers in this way that is becomes a relatively painless process to transplant. Now the trick is to figure out when to cut & transplant.