Pumpkin Patch Update

I am losing sleep.   No, not because of any major family or physical problem.  I have been worried sick about my pumpkin patch.  

As I said about a week ago when I first wrote about my pumpkin patch, I (really Timmy and Lily) planted three small mounds of 3-5 pumpkin seeds on July 14th.  This was about a month to 2 months too late.  However, I figured I would take a chance, because the package said I could expect nice pumpkins within 100 days, which would be around Halloween.     I watered these three small flowers when I saw them shoot up starting about a week later, with the water I got out of our de-humidifier (who said I'm not a conservationist?) .  That was all I did.

I was so happy when we got back from Notre Dame on August 24th, and my patch looked so good.   I noticed, however, by the end of last week, that Powdery Mildew was starting on some of the leaves. I watched Youtube.  I googled it.  I read gardening books.   I went to garden centers and bought sprays.  Finally, I did what I thought made some sense, and I tried to get rid of it.

I immediately noticed that my pumpkin vines had started to yellow, and wither.   In the last 10 days, I went from one small possible pumpkin, to 5 nice sized pumpkins.  However, my one gardener friend just told me that the "growing season" ends around here on September 15th, and the first frost is October 12th (I'm assuming that this is a statistical generalization, and not a precise day, but it is good to know.   I try to always wait until Mother's Day to plant flowers here--I guess kind of the same generalization).   So, nothing really will grow much more after September 15th, because of the cooling of the air, the amount of sunshine, etc.   Unfortunately, my pumpkins still have  lot of growing I need them to do.  

To be honest, I would be thrilled if I just got one nice pumpkin out of the whole patch.   We have been having fun going out to look for pumpkins, and I think the kids are actually kind of proud of themselves.

Do you see how bad that vine looks?   What is with that?  It looks terrible.   The rest of the plants still seem to be growing, but is that what happens with pumpkins?  It just doesn't look good.

I am still getting some smaller pumpkins, which I hope have time to grow bigger.   Although someone suggested that we could always paint the smaller pumpkins.   That is a cute idea.