RIP pumpkin patch

So, last night I harvested most of the pumpkins, for jack-o-lantern carving with the kids. We did all of the big ones and some of the small ones, and saved the seeds for roasting.

Sugar baby pumpkin patch drying up


Jack pumpkins


Sugarbaby pumpkins


still ripening






Here is a pic of one part of the new garden, with the companion plants wheat and peas. I planted them at the same time, but the peas are a bit stronger. Next time I'll give the wheat a week headstart.

Wheat & Peas coming up

October Pumpkins in the desert - believe it or not!

Bringing in a summer pumpkin crop is quite possibly the most gratifying accomplishment in my Arizona Victory Gardening career. I've got about 8 sugar babies, and about 7 jack o lanterns getting fat and orange right now!

A nice fellow was driving by on his bike the other day while I was watering, and he stopped and chatted for a bit. He was a gardener too, and he didn't even know it was possible to grow pumkins in Phoenix!





Sugar Baby

That was my first sugar baby, matured in late Sept, from a mid June planting.







Immature sugar baby








Immature jack o lantern



The pics are a couple weeks old, showing them maturing nicely but still green. Most of them are orange now, and the vines are dying off (I'll try to update pics soon).





The coolest part of growing pumpkins is the beautiful huge orange flowers in morning, which always attract swarms of honey bees.

bee in pumpkin flower

Big Max Pumpkins

The Big Max variety has produced some big pumpkins, as billed, and has also lasted longest into the summer heat. The Jack-o-lantern variety produced more pumpkins, but they are smaller, and the plants have withered up for the most part by now. The Big Max pumpkins are still going strong.

Heat Tolerant Vine Crops

Planting heat tolerant crops is vital when Victory Gardening in Arizona during the summer. The following is a list in descending order of heat tolerance, among the traditional "summer" vine-type crops.

Most Heat Tolerant
Okra
Watermelon
Tomato
Pumpkin
Squash
Cucumber
Cantelope
Least Heat Tolerant

We have not had the hottest spring on record, its been pretty nice lately, in fact. We hovered around 100 degrees a couple weeks ago, but since then, it has been in the mid/upper 90's. Still, while not yet reaching the scorching 110's of true AZ summer, the crops can show daytime wilt.

The most prone to heat wilt, I have found, are cantelope, cucumbers, and squash, which get stressed out in the upper 90's.

So far, the okra and watermelons have had absolutely zero problem with the heat. The pumpkins are more mixed, but the jumbo variety is standing up the best.

The tomato leaves show some stress when the get a bit dry, but they handle the heat just fine for the most part.

Here is a nice trick I have found to keep the cucumber's happy: interplanting with the okra. The cucumbers seem to like the shade that the okra provides, but the okra is not as dominating as the pumkins or squash, for example. Nice companions, as you can see below, the cucumber is thriving under the okra, but getting burned up on its own.



Cucumber burning up on its own below

Pumpkin & Watermelon

My pumpkin vines are going nuts. I interplanted with corn, and the corn is having a hard time keeping up. I actually have had to thin a handful of the pumpkin plants, as well as whack off a few of their big leaves to give some of the corn some light.

Thriving pumpkin plants:


Pumpkin/Corn interplanting:


The pumpkins are also leaving the watermelons behind. Luckily, I did not interplant them, so the watermelons have time to grow a bit before being totally dominated.

Little Watermelon plants: