I’ve been tending to pumpkins, growing them vertically this summer. It gave me more yardage to plant more and have a variety of different plants for my summer and fall gardens. Vertical planting not only helps to prevent erosion of leaves and vegetables but it’s also a means of having some organization and keeping the plants more uniform and attractive-a pleasant place to enjoy horticulture in your own proximity of yard space. It then becomes a refuge, a relaxing part of the universe.
I cross-pollinated pumpkins, even with other plants and vegetables, and produced such pretty yellow ones as well as green that will remain a light shade when they are fully developed. The yellow ones are smooth and shiny, also having a yellow stem that will remain. I adore them even more than the typical orange sugar pumpkins for pie and the larger ones for carving out faces for Halloween jack-o-lanterns.
This is my favorite stage of an orange pumpkin-when it’s in transition of ripening from green to an October color. The green veins on this one that are almost black in places on the exterior look Victorian, maybe like a dainty lace. This one is growing from the back of a wrought-iron chair, so I have a stake secured in the ground and set in place to carefully keep it from dangling in case it gets too heavy. I want it to mature, then put into pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.
It has enjoyed basking in the sun. It will hang out here a little longer, refuse to say goodbye to summer though welcome the fall.
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