End of the Season
The 2006 pumpkin harvest.
Ten pumpkins. All medium to small. The green one was accidentally relieved of it’s vine, a victim of overly enthusiastic removal of the dying vines from the other pumpkins. It can be hard to keep the vines straight. I was just trying to get rid of everything attacked by powdery mildew.
The pumpkin in the upper right is Garrison’s. It was planted in horrible, unamended soil as a test. It didn’t suffer in size. The plant grew as fast and as well as the others. But notice the odd bumps it has in several places…
… and the frustrating holes on it’s bottom.
A future autopsy may reveal what’s underneath those odd bumps. I wrote to the Garden Detective, a group of master gardeners that post answers to gardening questions in the home and garden supplement of the paper, but they haven’t chosen to respond. I can’t be the only one with this problem. My best guess is earwigs, but they’re supposed to leave ‘irregular holes’ which these aren’t and I doubt they could eat their way through a pumpkin rind.
Ever since I removed the pumpkin vines the rabbits have been a terror. They’ve started eating melon leaves and have destroyed the morning glories and eggplants. They’re not even supposed to like melons. It’s almost as though they’re angry about the loss of their pumpkin patch, although I doubt they can think that deeply and the pumpkins are one plant they completely left alone. Here are the cantelopes they prematurely liberated from their leaves and vines.
You can see how small they are using the cantelope seeds, which are only a little smaller than supermarket cantelope seeds, for comparison. They also even ate the powdery mildew covered santa claus melon leaves and vines, leaving only a sad, unripe melon behind.
It was still growing. 
I doubt it will ripen successfully now. I’m so tired of fighting the rabbits. Next year we’re just going to fence off everything they might eat, no matter what the garden looks like. Liquid Fence works great but all you have to do is relax your guard once, leaving plants unsprayed a few days too long and you’ll lose your entire crop.
They’re 7 1/2 years old now. They’re supposed to live 9 years, but they’re so healthy, no doubt from the rich variety of food available to them, inlcuding fresh lettuce and carrots daily, plus hay and pellets. They may outlive all expectations. Years from now people will ask us how we managed to keep them alive and healthy so long. Perhaps we should introduce them to some bad habits.
Please note I’m not serious! They also serve as our year-round fertilization service, generously spreading their brand of black gold throughout the garden.
Of the dozens of cosmos plants that came up, only two survived to have leaves too tall for rabbits to reach. Finally they’ve started blooming.
There are many flower buds waiting to open.
