The life of a pumpkin
from flower to cutting
The funnest things to grow are the more random ones. I’ve grown a watermelon, a honey dew and …. a pumpkin.
It was the summer of 2013 and with Fall around the corner and my wife pregnant, I thought growing a pumpkin would be fun. I bought it from Spiral Gardens, a community garden and nursey two blocks away from me.
I didn’t expect it to grow so huge. They warned me and I should have listened. The plant leaped out of the raised bed. From one end of the vine to the other — it must have been 20 feet, maybe more. The flowers from the pumpkin were beautiful. They would open wide during the day, but close at night. The local bees/bugs LOVED these flowers.
Then the growing began. Many of the pumpkin babies didn’t make it. They would form a small oval-shaped pale pumpkin, but they would rot and fall off the vine. But two began to survive.
I took the photo below at night for scale. This is a few weeks in and the pumpkin is about the size of my hand.
Many weeks after that — and the pumpkin required me to squat and wrap both my hands around it in order to pick it up. I would guess it weighed around 35-45lbs.
A little help with scale. The wood you see to the right of the screen is the raised bed. The stool in the back is just under the height of my knee.
When it was ready, I took the pumpkin off the vine and put it in the front of my house. I think this is early October.
My son was also ready in early October (Oct. 4th, 2013). Here he is still very fresh from the womb. I think maybe a week or two.
Cutting up the pumpkin on Halloween.
My son — now about 3 weeks old. Not the biggest fan of the pumpkin or the outfit we put him in.
But I was proud. The pumpkin to my left (your right) was the only other pumpkin that made it from the plant. A bit smaller — maybe weighed 20lbs.
The picture on the left is me and my mother. It’s the Halloween of 1982 and I am 6 months old. On the right is Roland and his mother the Halloween 0f 2013. Roland is abou 3 weeks old.
