The Plants That Ate San Francisco!!
Well, not quite. But it does seem like my pumpkin plants COULD take over the Bay Area if left unattended. Ever since I paid over $30 at the grocery store for a couple carving pumpkins one year, I decided I would start growing them myself. It's been a lot of fun trying out different varieties. The only problem is that pumpkin plants are HUGE!! Normally, I deal with this by growing them on an outside bed that has lots of "spillover" space, but I believe in crop rotation as a way to keep my soil fertile and relatively disease free. That means this year, I had to grow the pumpkins in the middle. And just as expected, they immediately wanted to take over the whole garden, crowding out everything else. Having some experience now with pumpkins, I let the vines grow until I saw I had enough pollinated and formed pumpkins, then it was time to start cutting. Here are my "Befores" and "Afters" where I took to the plants yesterday. If a vine had a pumpkin ...
