I love taking pictures and during a conference a speaker suggested telling a story or making a timeline using pictures. This spring I have been taking pictures and posting them on facebook. As I have been posting them on facebook I realized that gardeners have their own lingo and most people probably don't understand what we are saying. Below I will list some Penner Pumpkin lingo and techniques we use.
Milk jugs- We use these in our garden at the beginning of the season. We love going into our garden as early as possible, but there is always the weather to work around. One way we have done this is by using milk jugs around our plants. We fill them up with water and put them by each plant. The theory is that during the day the water will heat up and at the night the heat will be released. This keeps the plants from freezing. Also if we plant stuff out in April we make sure the plants can stand cold nights (so we don't plant out tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc). We seed our peas, and plant cabbage and potato plants.
Black plastic- We use this both in our greenhouse and outside in our garden. We use plastic to keep the weeds down. Also it keeps the plants wetter and it provides a bit of heat to the plants. This year we put down plastic on our entire pumpkin patch.
Floating row covers- This is a special cloth that keeps heat in and keeps bugs out. This allows us to plant earlier. Our cabbages like attracting bugs.
I have been thinking a lot about what we do at Penner Pumpkins and the techniques we use and I realized that gardening can be quite complicated. I have been doing it for 20 + years so it makes sense, but a newcomer would be quite confused. Pumpkins, gourds, and squash can't be planted side by side, we have to make sure there is a couple of rows, usually we plant corn, to separate them. Also Indian corn and sweet corn cannot be planted side by side because it would make the sweet corn inedible. Also some varieties of sweet corn cannot be planted side by side. Also corn needs to be seeded in blocks (we usually do 4-5 row) so that there is good pollination. Every year we get new seed catalogues and they always give us good tips for the garden. With pumpkins we use many varieties so that we can have blue, orange, white, warted, flat, red, big, small, or pie pumpkins. I love gardening and I love seeing what comes out of the garden.
Lorissa Penner
Milk jugs- We use these in our garden at the beginning of the season. We love going into our garden as early as possible, but there is always the weather to work around. One way we have done this is by using milk jugs around our plants. We fill them up with water and put them by each plant. The theory is that during the day the water will heat up and at the night the heat will be released. This keeps the plants from freezing. Also if we plant stuff out in April we make sure the plants can stand cold nights (so we don't plant out tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc). We seed our peas, and plant cabbage and potato plants.
Black plastic- We use this both in our greenhouse and outside in our garden. We use plastic to keep the weeds down. Also it keeps the plants wetter and it provides a bit of heat to the plants. This year we put down plastic on our entire pumpkin patch.
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