Harvest Day!

Well, this weekend was rainy...

Really rainy.

So of course it was time to harvest the last of the grapes and harvest the pumpkins from both my garden and our black plastic pumpkin patch.

I used the last of our grapes to make 3 gallons of grape juice!  I am pretty excited about that.

I used the pumpkins... to make me feel happy. 

Here are the ones from my garden.  I devoted roughly 15 square feet to pumpkins this year, and harvested about 25 pumpkins of varying size.
The ones in the front are baby boo, then there are the orange cutie, then, new england pie pumpkin, and last and most dramatic are the cinderella pumpkins.

They are shiny, because they are wet.  I picked them and then washed them off because they had been sitting in dirt... unlike our black plastic pumpkins who needed no such washing!!!  (So many benefits!)

The Cinderellas are my favorite because they are big and really bright, but even in the best conditions, I never seem to get more than one pumpkin per plant.  I am greedy, but I have to admit that the one large Cinderella makes me happy.  It will hang out on display until after thanks giving, then we will eat it most of December.

Then we headed to the plastic pumpkin patch.

Then we picked and picked, and threw the vines in the compost bin.  We want the powdery mildew spores to be composted by a professional so that they don't stick around in our soil and build up to be a problem.

We then admired the pumpkins of our labor.
6 pumpkin holes
2 rolls of black plastic
2 bags of cow manure
5 months to grow

= roughly 35 pumpkins.

Such a great season.  I must admit, I look forward to next year... If you have space in your back yard, I am a comin for you!

Cheers!
-Michelle