A few chilly nights have reminded me that Fall is coming soon. As you may know from the blog, Fall is my favorite season. I look forward to it for months and spend the months of Fall embracing everything pumpkin. I love that my friend grows giant pumpkins and gives me the opportunity to photograph them as they grow. When I show up at the pumpkin patch, and see these giants, who are so much bigger than my last visit, I'm reminded just how close Fall is.
I visited the pumpkin patch this past weekend. Watching giant pumpkins grow is nothing like watching grass grow. Once they start growing, they grow pretty fast. You can see the difference each time you visit the pumpkin patch. The giants have grown so much since my last visit almost two weeks ago.
Below, a picture of the same pumpkin two weeks ago. It's amazing how fast they grow.
The other pumpkin is growing too. He is still such a cool color.
For comparison, here is the same giant pumpkin, photographed almost a month ago (on the left) and two weeks ago (on the right).
Each giant pumpkin grows on his own plant. Each plant can only support one pumpkin growing this big. The plants is huge, covers so much ground and has these enormous leaves.
The sheet over the pumpkin protects him from the sun. When it gets colder out, he will have a blanket at night to keep him warm.
The long gourd, which looks a lot like a green baseball bat for a giant, is growing too. Once they start growing, the can grow several inches in a day, and it is so wild to be able to see a difference in just a day's time.
Want to see these giants in person? Many giant pumpkins will take over Ridgefield at Ridgefield's Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off on September 28th. Be sure to click on the link to check out the event webpage.
What do you do with the pumpkins after the weigh-off??
ReplyDeleteHi Jessie! It depends. Some pumpkins have been used by charities to raise money (guess the weight contests). One of the growers at the Ridgefield Pumpkin Weigh Off last year, donated his pumpkin to charity. I know another grower who donated his to charity a few years earlier as well. Some will sell them. Some will put them outside of their house and have the coolest pumpkin on the block or the biggest jack o'lantern ever. All the growers harvest the seeds from the pumpkins to use to grow future giants.
DeleteCarrie, it is so wild to see them grow so big. When all the growers bring them to the weigh off, there will be a fork lift there to get them on/off the trucks and onto the scale. I had no idea pumpkins could grow this big until I started visiting my friend's pumpkin patch.
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