Giant Pumpkin Challenge.

Bugger!!  I'm out.

I was out checking over the pumpkin that I was soooo happy with...And it is going soft.  I tried to to lift it to see if anything has been nibbling on it's bottom cause something sure has gone wrong and it broke off from the vine. And I was such a bragger!  Pride come before the fall, I think I have heard that somewhere. 

And looking at the vine it is really looking ratty, not sure why I haven't noticed before now and done something about it.  Heaps of powdery mildew and probably my fault because I had sprinklers on for the chooks and forgot to check the coverage.  I am a bad pumpkin mummy.

So, I will feed the soft pumpkin to the chooks, I will cut the vine right back, water it, feed it, mulch it, start again and see what happens.  There are a few flowers on there still, and I think I saw a small fruit.  And I still have the other vine, I know there is a couple of fruit on that.  Will need to go out and check...

Hmmm.  Been out, checked...I am a very bad pumpkin mummy.

The second vine has 2 decentish size fruit on it and maybe 4-6 smaller tennis ball size pumpkins.
One of the bigger ones is going brown and is soft.  It is the size of a basketball.

The other looks like something, chickens maybe, has been nibbling on the top.  OK, as chickens can't nibble it is either something else or the marks are not nibble marks but small peck marks.  No matter, it all means the same.  I have not protected my pumpkins from creatures/critters and they are suffering.

The 4litre icecream container is to show the size, it is not a hat.  It is not there to protect the pumpkin from nibbling, pecking critters/creatures...It was handy and the tape measure wasn't.  It is HOT out there now so I will cut back and do the water, feed, mulch thing this evening.

Giant Pumpkin Growing.

A while back now some people over at Aussies Living Simple set out a challenge.  A challenge to grow a giant pumpkin. The seeds are from an Atlantic Giant pumpkin grown by a member of ALS.  Seeds were sent out to people who wanted to join in the fun.  I was one of them.

Sometime during August or September the seeds were sent out to me.  I recieved 3 as did a daughter.  After letting them sit on the bench for awhile while I worried about what to do.   I finally decided to just do it.  It was a fun thing not a life engangering thing so not sure why I was so worried about sticking a few seeds in the ground.   So I went out and dug 3 holes and filled them with cow manure that I collected from the back paddock.  Filled the holes in and covered them with mulch from the chookshed and left them to sit for a couple of weeks.

It was coming up to November and I remembered hearing from someone that had entered them up at the Dwellingup fair that they planted theirs on Melbourne Cup day so I figured around then was as good a time as any other.  We were going away for a few days around then and the weather was supposed to be cool so in they went.  We did have a couple of chooks that kept jumping over the fence into the pen I wanted to grow these things in so I put an old birdcage over 1 and a box and old fridge shelf over the other 2 as protection.

One seed was up when we got home so that was less than a week after it was planted.  Another one took a couple of weeks longer and the third never came up at all.  Eventually they were busting out of their cage and so I had to remove them and let the vines run free. 

It wasn't too long before there were flowers and little pumpkins.

The chooks did get in and scratched around but only one stem ended up with a break and that still grew.

Husband mentioned a couple of weeks ago about how big this one particular pumpkin was getting so I went out this afternoon to get a photo.  He's right, it is quite big.

That's a 4litre icecream container sitting on top.

It still has a long way to go before it reaches prize winning size but I am pleased with it.

September Veg.

We didn't buy any veg throughout September but were lucky enough to be given a couple of cabbages from family to add to what we had growing here.  I appreciate the stuff that we get given and realise that things would sometimes be a bit tight without this generosity of others.

It all helps the little that I am doing out there be enough to keep us fed which is just as well but how things will be over the next few months is anybodies guess.  There is a bit out there growing and if we can get on top of the slaters then we might make it through the rest of the year but I am not having much luck with getting these pests under control without resorting to poisons.

With the warm weather coming though we will be eating more salads so I think that another bag of carrots will need to be bought sometime.

The only fruit we have eaten from our garden is a few handfuls of Strawberries.   I really need to work on getting something producing fruit every month.  More trees, berries, something...More research in this area is needed.

There is still plenty of fish and meat in the freezers and some close to use by date meat had been gicen to us again so apart from a few feeds of liver no meat had had to be bought. 
Eggs have been eaten on a regular basis as we have plenty of them.

Three months to go and though things may be a bit lean I am still hopeful that we wont have to buy much but am really not too fussed if carrots are needed and bought.

Pests and Weeds.

Bloggers being a pain and I can't even comment on my own blog.  How sad is that!!

We're still having heaps of pest problems and the pellets are looking better to me all the time.  WE, (Hubby) did an experiment.  He put pellets under a couple of my *traps*   In a couple of spots, away from root vegetables and lettuce, near the peas and brocolli.   All the slaters under them are dead and the plants have not been nibbled on.    The beds that he didn't do still have heaps, under the traps and walking across the soil and on the plants.  I have lost more seedlings to these bleedin' things.  He says that shows I should be using it where the seedlings are...Hmmm, I don't want to but I do want them to leave my food alone.
I put old grass clipping from the chook yards onto the gardens as mulch and the weeds I pull out I usually leave on the garden to rot down and feed the soil.   The gardens need to be fed but it does encourage these things.  I have been pulling away all this stuff  from the plants and keeping it to the side and scooping up the slaters that go there.  They still come out and eat the plants though as I cannot collect them all.  They burrow under the ground and dozens are missed.  Come Summer and this mulch will have to be spread over the garden again. 
Last year we tried penning in a few of the smaller chooks to scratch around and eat the slaters.  It didn't work.  Our gardens always have something growing in at least half of them and the silly chooks kept getting out and going for the growing green stuff.  I spent too much time fixing the makeshift fence and chasing chooks out of where they shouldn't be. 
The bloke out the back told us that he limed his pumpkin area before he planted otherwise the slaters got into his pumpkins so we tried that and it seemed to work but this year they are back in that bed.  And stuff didn't grow as well as it should have done because of the lime...We have thought of using diatomaceous earth but have been told by our rural supplier that it needs to be foodgrade and he doesn't sell it and I keep forgetting to look when I am out of town.

Over the last week I have notice the Cabbage White Butterfly around so it means I'll have to keep the baddie racquet's handy.  I wouldn't think or buying in poison for them as they are kinda controllable and the caterpillars can be picked off before they do too much damage.  It's just the slaters I hate and want gone once and for all.

Last year we lost all our peaches to Fruitfly.  It was a really bad year here for them and we had them in trees that haven't had them before.  Even the Strawberry Guavas were infected.  We were catching them in the traps but once again, there were so many.  Eveyone that I have spoken about it says the same thing.  Last year was a BAD year in our area for fruitfly.  I plan on putting the traps out again this week but Hubby has bought some spray.  He says his boss hates spraying but used this spray last year and he got fruit while we didn't.  The spray is EcoNaturelure and as the boss is a bit of a greenie I'm thinking it might be alright...
The traps I use are coke bottles with different homemade lures.  They did trap a lot but not enough to save the fruit.


And then we have the grass.  Hubby spent all day last weekend mowing out the front of our place.  It was his one day off here at home.  It is too thick and half is under trees so too hard for me to do.   I'm starting to think that poisoning that area is the way to go.  This time of the year he is too busy with work and I hate that he needs to spend his time off doing that.  I have other things for him to do!!    He also mows the dam area which is too big of an area for me.  I can sometimes get the area around the house completed, sometimes the girls come and do it for me.   The edges though, they could do with a dose of poison too.   Keeping the grass from them is stopping me from doing other things.  Like sitting in the sun and reading, going for a walk, riding the bike, being on the computer...you know, the good stuff.

As I get older and more sore I am getting more tempted to do what I don't want.  The simple life really isn't so simple.