Has anyone ever raised a MILK-FED PUMPKIN?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

I've just planted my pumpkin seedlings and cannot get out of my mind the chapter in "Farmer Boy" describing how Almanzo raised a milk-fed pumpkin to huge proportions. Has anyone here actually done it?

-- gita (gita@directcon.net), April 22, 2002

Answers

I know that you can feed corn milk to get huge ears but not sure if you 'water' it or if you actually inject the stalk with the milk. This is going to be intresting to see what others say : )

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), April 22, 2002.

Cannot say that I have, however, you might find this account of a modern milk-fed pumpkin interesting -- http://www.geocities.com/liwrockyridge/pumpkin2.html

If you don't want to read the whole thing, the upshot is that the experimental milk-fed pumpkin weighed 65 lbs, the non-milk-fed grown from the same seed source hit 200 lbs.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), April 23, 2002.


My mother always told of a man around here who did that kind of thing when she was a child. Said he raised the biggest pumpkins that way. As I understand it, they were just "watered" with milk.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), April 23, 2002.

One thing to remember is that in all probability, Almanzo used raw milk, not pasteurized. Raw milk is quite different from pasteurized. It contains more nutrient and enzymatic value than pasteurized.

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), April 23, 2002.

Oh, man! Planting pumpkin seeds?!?!?? (Michigan gardener whining) My daughter told me that our old neighbor did that, injected it, but I don't really remember any massive pumpkins! Good luck! Amy

-- Amy (kimico@aol.com), April 23, 2002.


I remember trying this as a kid, based on the "Farmer Boy" book. I don't remember how it came out but the method was:

Pick the best looking infant pumpkin on a particular vine. Remove all other pumpkins growing on that same vine. Cut a small slit in the underside of the vine, a few inches before the pumpkin. Insert the end of a piece of clean wick (like for a kerosene lamp) into the slit in the vine and the other end into a small container of milk, set into the ground a bit. The milk is supposed to wick up into the vine and so has to be refilled or changed daily.

Like I said - I know I tried it but, don't know if it works. Being a kid, I don't think I was real faithful about taking care of the plant!

-- J Flynn (flynn4@netzero.net), April 23, 2002.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ