Sadly the pumpkins are dying… I can hardly bear to show you these photos. (sobbing!!! Well that is an exaggeration)
I don’t know what went wrong. Too hot? Too humid? Too dry? Though they did get watered regularly. Maybe too much water!!! Some sort of deficiency? Maybe they didn’t like the palisade/prison!!! Don’t forget the insects and bugs that abound at this time of the year. There are so many things can go wrong with plants in the garden.
So the structure will be coming down and this experiment is a failure…
Jack has just looked over my shoulder and said “Oh no, you are not going to show that, are you?”.
But I couldn’t end on such a sad note so here is a photo of another corner of the garden.
The paper daisies I grew from seed are flowering. The geraniums all nurtured from cuttings, given to me by a friend, are a splash of colour, and the alyssum sends out clouds of scent.
Gardening is such an absorbing pastime, mostly success and then the occasional failure to keep me trying harder next time.
The sun is out, it is Friday, the kids are all back in school, life is back to normal. The beach should not be too busy. So Jack has just suggested we bike down to the beach, he will have a swim, then we will go for lunch to the surf club.
Living in Paradise... 
You can’t win them all, I am way in front with my blue ribbons.
The like only applies to the last paragraph of this post.🚴♂️ 🏊🏻♀️😎
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Yes win some, lose some… 😏
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Oh dear! Yes, sometimes it’s ‘human’ to share those failures; this one looks like a blight – many times with melons it’s a soil-born disease that comes from splashes.. no matter what caused it, i’m so sorry!
The second image, of course, is one that makes us smile, especially when one plants tiny seeds with love then watches them grow to their rightful destiny! I’m glad to be online with time to enjoy the posts and leave my calling card!
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G’day Lisa, lovely to see you pop in. I think it maybe was blight, it has been very humid. I’ve never had any success with cucumbers, courgettes etc. I’ve given up trying with them,but thought the pumpkin would be tougher. Seems not… ☹️
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It looks like a few things going on with the pumpkins, but over watering or under watering do not seem to be the worst of the problems. Was it mulched heavily? It looks like a deficiency that could have been caused by too much mulch that was not adequately composted. The yellowing is to uniform to be a ‘typical’ nutrient deficiency, but could be. Of course, the insect munching is a different issue. Such munching is worse than it looks, and may not bother production too much. I am sorry that it did not work out.
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You may have hit the nail on the head Tony. We did plant the seeds in a deep pile of mulch, thinking that they would thrive with all the nutrients. But maybe it wasn’t broken down well enough. We initially made a hole and put potting mix in with the seeds to start them off. Oh well we live and learn.
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Do those scary vinyl bat fox things down the road eat pumpkins? I would not want them in my garden.
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I don’t know about pumpkins, but the golden cane palms are all full of seeds and they come in nightly squeecking and rustling around in the fronds.
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:O
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At least they are not wallabies!
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😱
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Oh dear. Poor pumpkins. Having been drilled by plant pathologist Graham into giving things sufficient ventilation, it may be that the cage reduced air circulation, given your current weather cons, and then one thing led to another. Am only guessing. (Sorry, Jack – not wishing to cast aspersions on your fine structure).
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Yes starting to look like a combination of things. Maybe try again in a different position. Now what to do with those pallets….
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Compost bin????
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Unfortunately not enough room for another bin
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After my attempt last year, which failed miserably due to one thing and another, I have decided only to grow ‘stuff’ that the S&S don’t like to munch on and that includes courgettes and squash and beans and… well there is a whole list of them. Instead I am turning one of the raised beds into a herb garden and the other into a white garden. Well that’s the plan for now 😀 Jack could turn those pallets into ‘window boxes’ to hang on the wall or fence. My neighbour did that and grew strawberries in them.
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Now the window box sounds good, except I am planning to downsize big time on all pots, containers, and annuals, back to broms and easy care things. Well that is the plan at the moment…
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I agree. Pots are difficult to maintain as you get older. My neighbour just used a lining in the pallet thing she made and filled it with herbs and strawberries. No pots involved. You could fill yours with bromeliads I guess.
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🤔 hmm I’ll have to think about it….
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Each new gardening season is like an experiment, but we always learn something even from what seems to be a failure. Here in the US, I’ve only seen pumpkins growing on the ground where they can spread out. I guess that is why most of us don’t grow pumpkins in our garden because we don’t have the room. I was pulling for Jack’s experiment because I thought it would give people with normal size yards a chance to grow them. 🙂 Hope you had a lovely time at the beach.
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We do not have enough space to let a pumpkin do what a pumpkin wants, ie take over. So I was hoping the frame would work. I’d seen it on YouTube. Yes we had a lovely time on the beach, photos coming….
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Ah, shame….but as Jack says, you can’t win ’em all….
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Unfortunately the weather and outside things can influence the gardening results. Will maybe try again…
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Absolutely…but do try again, Pauline!
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Sorry to hear about your pumpkins Pauline.. Such is the life of a garden.. We all have our failures and successes.. And we try again.. I remember the other year we tried to grow celeriac , without much success, and I did all it said in the book.. And ended up composting them..
Hope you and Jack have a good weekend.. Love and HUGS..
Sue xxx ❤
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Not sure if we will try the pumpkins again, but plenty of other things to try. Hope you are having a good weekend…
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PS.. I meant to add I love your flowers xxx ❤
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I knew you would…
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It looks like somethings eaten them to me, what a shame.
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here are hungry grasshoppers around at the moment eating everything…
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I hope the seagulls didn’t knock off your chips!
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Oh yes they are very good at that. But the chip eating people are usually at the other end of the beach. Has that happened to you?
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Thankfully no but it fascinates me how opportunistic those birds are. You really are spoilt for choice with all those surf clubs on the Coast.
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