I had this bright idea that we should plant pumpkins in the raised bed just outside the basement door. Years ago, in the old house (before the fire), we’d used this area as a compost thing. Nothing formal, we just tossed all of our veggie scraps there, trying to both fill up the raised bed and get rid of our scraps at the same time.
Periodically, Frank would dump things like ashes, sawdust, wood chips and such on there as well. Unfortunately, with the house destruction after the fire, it also got filled up with pieces of metal and broken glass, so I have to be really careful when I work in it. The soil there has always been just perfect, with all that composting in place going on.
So I covered the weeds and such with an old wool blanket that I wanted to get rid of anyway. I figured that would be the only thing capable of smothering those happy, healthy weeds. I poked holes in the blanket and planted the pumpkin seeds, and we’ve watered all summer.
It got blossoms, huge ones, actually. But they’d wilt very quickly, no matter how much we watered the plant. And we’d get these teeny little baby pumpkins right where the blossom was, but they would fall off within hours.
So we have all this foliage, and no pumpkins! It’s taking off for New York, but I’d been hoping for a huge pumpkin with that great soil. Our area has a huge pumpkin festival every fall, for which we hold the world record of number of pumpkin jack o’ lanterns lit at once. I want to grow our own, carve and bring them.
What I really want for this spot is a huge climbing red rose. But I want that ugly concrete covered up first and a pretty trellis built. Don’t know when that’s going to happen!