Atlantic giant pumpkin seeds

As you can see on my picture my grandson and I grew a pumpkin a couple of summers ago. We really enjoyed the time we spent taking care of it together so this winter when a very kind forum member asked if I would like a few seeds I jumped at the chance. I told him I would do a thread on it here so he could see our progress. I have two peat pots on a heat mat hydrating and warming up. Last night I took two seeds and lightly filed the edges to make it easier for them to sprout.

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Awesome!!! I love pumpkins and am just starting to learn how to grow them. The bigger the better! I’ll be following your progress closely and taking notes to see if I can grow anything.
Good luck!

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Well I hope I don’t disappoint, I am no expert and there are lots of things that can go wrong. It’s kind of like picking one peach at shuck split then removing all the other peaches on the tree.

A giant emerges…well it’s not that big yet.

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Lookin good!

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I think the atlantic giant depends a lot on daylength. The big ones seem to be in the north where summer days are long. I have never seen one grow any larger than a big max.

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They do like the long days up north and I think they prefer the cooler midsummer temps as well. I have grown some big max here a long time ago and they did get pretty big but I could pick up the biggest one, maybe 80 lbs. A couple of years ago I grew the one in my avitar with some Atlantic giant seed from lowes. I couldn’t lift it or weigh it but I did use a measuring chart that estimated it at 250 lbs. It did really well until the real hot summer heat set in. It is real fun to measure it every day and calculate the growth. I hope to grow a bigger one this year as I have better seed , we will see, there are lots of things that can go wrong.

Yesterday one side of the seed leaf was still covered , today it was fully emerged. I prepared a a hill with a mixture of compost, pine bark fines , cow/chicken manure, enriched garden soil, wood ash, and yard clippings . The roots had already hit all sides and the bottom of the three inch peat pot. I positioned it (I hope) so the vine , which grows opposite of the first true leaf, will grow a little north west through good dirt.

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We had some very high winds this morning as a thunderstorm hit. It beat the pumpkin up a little but I think it pulled through. The first true leaf is out and the vine should start to run out the opposite direction. I gave it a first dose of liquid miracle grow rose fertilizer.

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It looks a little pale to me. Does anyone have any input as to what it may need, more nitrogen???

I don’t know if it needs N right now. But for growing giant fruit water and nitrogen will be as important as anything. Applying a little N each week would be my plan.

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I try to add as much as I dare , I start it out pretty slow. We have had some cloudy days , may just need some sun

Neat project, Jason. Turns out that just last year the man directly across the street from me who also has a you-pick strawberry patch decided to grow giant pumpkins as a project to do with his grandson! SImilar to you, he said they really enjoyed it. I wish I knew what kind they grew but I don’t. But they sort of got their heart’s broken in the end. They grew them all summer and had 3 that were real giants…much bigger than the little grandson so the made for fun photos. They had decided to enter them in our county fair and were working on that goal all summer and early fall (our fair is late September). Just about 2 weeks before the fair, and really even before the pumpkins were truly ripe, all 3 of the biggest ones started to rot and within a very short time were completely ruined!!! I sure don’t want to discourage you and I see no reason what this would happen to you -don’t even know what happened to them. But they still had lots of fun growing them so it wasn’t a waste at all. Good luck!

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I have had trouble with rot in the past too. I don’t take mine any where, usually just make a jack o lantern out of it way too early, lol. I read a post on a pumpkin growing site about a fellow that grew a pumpkin that he thought weighed four or five hundred pounds. He got several friends together and loaded it up to take to a scale that could handle it. When they got to the loading dock and lifted it out of the pickup it suddenly exploded and covered them all in prutred rotten pumpkin. I still laugh when I think about that. But you are right , there are many things that can go wrong when growing a big pumpkin, don’t count your eggs before they hatch… a lot like fruit growing when you think about it.

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Looking a little peaked still, one leaf looks sunburned , the vine is poking out but seems to want to run north instead of west like it is supposed to, I guess it didn’t read the how to grow pumpkins book. I added rotten hay, cow manure and oak leaves to the bed.

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It won’t be sunburned having been in the sun all this time. Doesn’t really look like fertilizer burn but that’s a possibility.

Is it dry? If so you might need to water. Esp so if you think fertilizer could be an issue.

If wet it could be a disease issue.

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If that is the “composted manure” you are using, it may be salt burning. Feedlot manure is often very high in salts, which can lead to burning similar to what you have there.

Sometime the package will give numbers for the salt content.

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Very wet, five inches of rain last week and five to seven more predicted this week by Saturday. Raining cats and dogs now. It was so cloudy last week that I thought that leaf may have never had much sunshine until Sunday.

The cow manure is from this winter at dads place where the cows stood and ate hay. The pumpkin is not really growing in it yet. The was supposed to be some manure in the bags of compost I added, maybe it is a little too strong?

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With that much rain it’s not likely a salt/fertilizer issue. Much more likely a disease like blight or poor drainage.