My pumpkin vine recently made a bid to take over the world, and it very nearly succeeded.  When starting this garden I gave myself the freedom to experiment… aka to mess up big time.  I didn’t want to be so worried about the outcome that I would be paralyzed to do anything.  Our garden plot is large, so I divided it up into quadrants with a small hill for squash in the center. In the center most part of the squash hill I planted a seedling that Aiden had made from the Easter Festival in downtown Nanaimo.  Dave and I call it the mystery pumpkin since neither one of us can remember what the seed was called at the festival.

Here is a picture of the mystery pumpkin seedling when we first planted it in the center hill of the garden.  It is the tiny seedling in the top center of the photo.

Please note the small, unassuming mystery pumpkin seeding in the center of the garden.

Now here it is today…

The mystery pumpkin tries to take over the world, starting with the garden.

Where did my lovely paths into the garden go? Oh, yes… They are buried under pumpkin vines.

I started noticing an issue with the pumpkin vine when it got more and more difficult to place the arching sprinkler into my garden patch.  The humungous leaves of the vine started blocking the water, so I began pinning leaves down under the sprinkler to give the rest of the garden a chance to get some water.  Then I started noticing that half of the garden was disappearing under the ever-encroaching vines.

It was when I woke up one morning from a stress dream about my garden that I realized something needed to be done about the vines.  Once again turning to the internet for a solution, I stumbled on the Pumpkin Nook.  Using the Pumpkin Nook’s information I attacked the pumpkin vine with a loving vengeance.  I pruned more pumpkin vine than I had realized even existed in the garden.

One of Little Man’s pumpkins.

Now that I’ve done some drastic cutting back of the pumpkin vine, it seems to still be trucking along healthily and Little Man daily goes out to check on the progress of his six pumpkins.  I can’t wait to see how big they get.  And I think I need to start doing a bit of internet research on uses for squash blossoms.  What I failed to mention is that on the north side of the pumpkin mound I planted zucchini and on the south side I planted sun burst squash… Yes…  Remember that I wanted to experiment?  At least I don’t have to worry about not having any garden produce…  😉