in pursuit of pumpkins

I want to have a pumpkin patch in my backyard....i have found a commercial one less than 45 minutes from my house so surely with care i can get a few pumpkins.  I am limited by space but i did find room for a watermelon plant so CROSSING MY FINGERS.  First i bought some seeds several varieties thinking ONE will work and by the way...I LOVE SEEDS...then i did some googling and read so much about growing these GIANT pumpkins which maybe we will try for next year.  This year i just want some REGULAR size pumpkins.  A few to carve and make some pie and bread with.  If we are lucky and have extras we can share with family and friends.  I planted the seeds this weekend and so far one of the sugar babies has germinated...Not bad only took 3 days.  Once i have some healthy seedlings i will find spots for them in my garden.  Here are a couple of pix...the varieties i planted and the containers i put them in and i marked the germinated sugar baby.  I am in pursuit of pumpkins...

Accidental watermelon

For spring break this year, which was mid March, the gardening bug first nibbled.  I headed off to Lowes in search of seeds and seedlings.  I picked up some tomatos seedlings...cuke seeds, bush bean seeds, okra seeds then decided i needed to get a few bell pepper plants.  Then i saw an okra display with these beautiful looking plants.  They were 3.50 each but i really love okra so I thought this plant might start giving me veggies a few weeks before the seeds, so i grabbed one.  After getting home and putting in all my plants and seeds on closer observation of the BEAUTIFUL okra plant i read the lil plastic plant info and it didn't say okra....it said WATERMELON.  Oh well (i know who can't tell the difference between an okra and a watermelon plant...apparently ME) so I did some googling on watermelons and found a spot for it in my flower beds.  At first it didn't do so well keeping only the 3 or 4 leaves it came with but as soon as the weather warmed up it TOOK OFF!  And we ended up with 3 watermelons.  One split after we had a TON of rain and it wasn't quite all the way ripe but the girls and i ate it anyways it was pretty good.   We still have the other two on the vine and are waiting for the vine to yellow off indicating they are READY ....here are a couple of pix one from June 11 and one from July 13.

Is this too CORNY?

Corn June 11 then again July 13 SEE what a difference a month makes!

garden in mid may

May 13th first red tomato! Green beans were just about ready, but cukes fell way behind.  My first seeds never germinated so had to replant.  However, placing them up against the screen of the pool made a perfect climbing trellis....one drawback is the bees can only approach from one side.

HERE I GO!

This is a journal/log of my new found fascination of gardening.  In the past I have had various attempts at gardening.  But this year gardening fever hit me hard!  In my tiny backyard so far I have had tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalepenos, okra, green beans, watermelon, corn and just planted some squash and black eyed peas.  I keep thinking Valerie...write this stuff down....like how it took 2 weeks before there were any FEMALE cucumber flowers and how never to plant bush beans behind tomatoes....the tomatoes get too tall and keep the beans without sunlight.