I know that so many of you are genuinely struggling right now with the heat, powdery mildew, vine borers and other issues this late in the season, so I feel a little bad showing the variety that I'm getting.
I had really good luck this year and hope it spreads to the rest of you!
Hi all! Hope everyone's pumpkins are doing well. I just got home from a week of travel and thought I'd post an update. Photos attached, beer for scale.
Also want to share some info that I replied to on my last post in case it helps any of you. If you need more info or detail, just ask.
From other thread:
Thank you everyone. Just now getting back to Reddit after traveling for a week. Not all giant pumpkins but clearly planted several Dill's Atlantic. Also planted many other kinds. Here are some other answers to the various questions (plus more) that I did this year for great pumpkins:
- Tested my soil for pH. I needed LOTS of lime. Best to do that in the fall the year before if you can, but I spread liquid lime for faster access. Will do granules this fall if a soil test says I need more.
- Spread a good nitrogen heavy granule fert early in the spring on the tilled soil.
- For the bastards--I mean--striped beetles, I have a dedicated 2 gallon sprayer for Sevin spray. I only did it once or twice early on to keep them at bay so they didn't decimate the young pumpkin plants. After a point, though, they can eat what they want and cause no real harm as the vines and foliage grow so fast.
- I have a battery powered 4 gallon sprayer for foliage fert. Used nitrogen heavy fert early on and then a fruit and bloom fert (for max blooms) then a phosphorus heavy fert for max fruit growth. All in stages. ChatGPT helped me figure out when to do what.
- Dedicated 4 gallon backpack sprayer for Clethodim -- kills grass not pumpkins. Had to hand week the broadleaf weeds.
- Hand watered with a hose about 3 times. It was a beast, but we had a dry spell early summer and the hand watering helped. Took me 4-5 hours each time. Now there is so much foliage and regular rain showers that everything is on auto-pilot.
Visited my patch yesterday and things are starting to happen! The high phosphorus fertilizer is really paying off.
Beer can for scale.
Good news: one of my Atlantic Giants is already the biggest pumpkin I have ever grown. Bad news: A groundhog gnawed on it.
Adding some other photos from this weekend as well. Had to put a big ugly silt fence around the giants to try and keep the groundhog out. I don't know how he is getting past the outer mesh electric fence.
These were all taken last weekend. I fertilized so hope they did well. Been traveling all week and will get to see everything tomorrow. Hopefully more to show then!
I have created a new brewing app out of necessity because I just wasn't getting what I needed from the others on the market. I wanted to make something that was AI first so that I could discuss with a brewing buddy what kind of recipe I wanted and then build the grain bill and toggle and recalculate things automatically with each iteration ir bit of feedback to the AI ("Brew Buddy"). That spiraled into a few other things from my experience as a homebrewer that I personally find very useful, like AI driven help to plan the specific steps to my brew day based on my equipment and recipe.
I was coming on here to maybe offer a couple of people a free trial in exchange for feedback, but I'm realizing after reading some of the posts that there's probably other things I haven't considered that maybe I should build in. For example it looks like a lot of people are into making seltzers and not just beer now.
Anyway I thought it would be a good thing to ask first what are the features that you most wish you had in a brewing app that you don't currently have out there?
Thanks in advance.
Hi all. Think I might do a last minute brewing session on this Sunday morning. would like to brew a Sam Adams Oktoberfest clone.
I have everything on hand except for WLP820. I do have W34/70.
Worth holding off for the WLP820 or is the difference pretty small?
the plan is to Locker it out over the summer and serve at my annual Octoberfest party.