Pumpkin – The Salem Garden

Keene Pumpkin Festival 2013

Gosh this looks fun! Great pumpkin carving ideas for the talented and patient carvers out there too! Great post New Hampshire Garden Solutions! Michele

New Hampshire Garden Solutions

In 1991 Keene, New Hampshire had a harvest festival that attracted a few local people who brought about 600 jack o lanterns. By 2003 the harvest festival had become a pumpkin festival and the number of lit jack o lanterns had risen to 28,952. The Guinness World Record people became interested that year and gave Keene the record for the most lit jack o lanterns assembled in one place. Boston took the record from Keene in 2006 with 30,128 jack o lanterns. This year on October 19th Keene took back the world record with 30,581 lit jack o lanterns and I was there taking photos. I thought I’d show you a few of the better ones. These were all taken in the dark without a tripod, so I’ll warn you that they aren’t the sharpest photos you’ve seen. Even so, I’d guess that most of you have never seen anything…

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What We Do With (Old) Pumpkins

Get this, we bury them, strategically, around the yard and woods… We really do! We have put them into the compost before but they take a long time to break down and we’ve been known to end up with crazy pumpkin plants coming up everywhere. So, we prefer to make a sport of choosing some good growing spots and plunking them into or sometimes, onto, the ground.

I love this white pumpkin. This one wasn’t carved this year because we didn’t get all of them carved. It’s kind of a long story that involves the emergency room and stitches. We won’t go there today.

Michael and I worked together to clear off the front steps and load the wheelbarrow… (not barrel, barrow, thank you spell check!)

Winnie was helping us, he loves to help whenever he can!

Did I mention that it’s very cold here today… 38 minus the wind chill. The wind is blowing at 30 or 40 miles per hour… it’s cold!Hence, the lovely hat and scarf 🙂
We identified a spot for the white pumpkin on the hill leading to the woods… This gets a good amount of sun in the summer and the vines will have a place to spread out.Michael just dug a little hole and buried it in..
I helped him… we are a team after all! Now, its good to go. In the spring the vines will come and if weather conditions are good and the bee population does it’s job, we’ll have lots of pumpkins from this. It may be run over by sledders all winter, but that’s okay. I think the kid activity actually helps things grow in a weird way… it’s just good energy!And the process is repeated with the hardy mums, they’ll likely re-emerge to enjoy next year. We just look for a good spot, plunk them in and see what happens…

Spring will be here before we know it! This gives us lots to look forward to all winter..

Stay safe and warm today!

Love, Michele (and Michael)

Pumpkins Pumpkins Everywhere!

It started with these two pumpkins that we grew…

then a few more were added to the landscape in the front yard…and onto the front porch…

Some of those came from our Columbus Day trip to Russell Orchards..

All of our kids were with us that day, nothing else makes me happier!

This sign ended up in the front porch planter this year..So, we now have this…Then the older girls went to youth group and came home with these amazing creations!And my oldest daughter baked a cake with fondant pumpkins…

That looked like this 🙂 It was four layers, with chocolate mousse filling…seriously…

We really have a lot of pumpkins.

Do your pumpkins multiply like ours do?

Just wondering…

The Great Pumpkin(s)!!

My little guy was hard at work yesterday…

These will be awesome jack o’lanterns in a few weeks~

Enjoy everything today!

Love, Michele

What’s Happening in the Garden- August 8, and a Little Check In

I’ve been so busy for the past ten days or so. I feel like I run through the garden, pull a few weeds, pick something and keep going. Next week looks like it will be kind of quiet and close to home. No one is at camp, no big commitments. I’m hoping to cook, bake and freeze produce. I may even try to do some canning again. If any or all of this happens, you’ll likely be reading about it! Here’s a quick view of the garden this morning.

I’ll start with the green monster at the moment. I did get a new, larger rug (I’ll post a pic when I do finish this project) and I’m thinking about hanging the old one above the love seat. I’m watching the trash for just the right garden gate to hang here but I haven’t found it yet. I’m working on it…one thing at a time. I’ll keep you posted if something great happens here!

We have just one more gladioli blooming. I was hoping for a dramatic presentation right along the fence but so far this is really slow.

This Morning Glory appeared and surprised me. I didn’t plant Morning Glories this year and I was missing them. I don’t see the Scarlet Runner Bean plants that I did plant here? guess the Morning Glories won the war.