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New Castle, Indiana

It's really amazing how much information you can glean within a span of a handful of months. Last season was more or less my practice run to see what sort of issues I would run into here. It ran the gamut of everything from SVB to PM as well as issues with pollination.

So what have we learned? Well, if you're serious and enthusiastic like I am, you have to go straight to the horse's mouth for the information that really counts. You'll find that most growers are eager to help because while we tend to compete with each other, we also root for each other because if you can't grow the biggest pumpkin, it's cool to know someone who does and watch what they do.

So for this year, I recently joined and attending the spring meeting for my state's growing club, reached out to a couple well known growers, and even got seeds from one of them. Another actually helped me figure the proper amount of type of fertilizer I needed to get (based on my soil test). I've planned out where and how I'm going to grow the vine as well.

Obviously I don't have results yet, but I would be willing to bet I'll have some kind of viable fruit this year and lot of it comes down to research and planning.

3/13/2023 12:49:41 PM