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Madison, WI

I’ve now had 4 pumpkins reach the size of a small soccer ball and when I wake up the next morning they are split open! Why is this happening? So frustrating!

7/3/2020 9:03:13 AM

Westmoreland, KS

Do you have images of your plant and your pumpkins this always helps more than likely it’s an in balance of nutrients probably in your soil but it’s hard to say. Did you do any soil test this year if so can you share them.

7/3/2020 10:08:59 AM

Madison, WI

I've posted pictures, soil test, and tissue test. Still waiting for BigPumpkin to post them, hopefully in the next hour or so.

Any help would be appreciated

7/3/2020 11:20:20 AM

Lakewood, WA

How much nitrogen is in your soil? Too much can explode 'em.

7/3/2020 1:03:42 PM

Syracuse, NY

i grew the 1756 Howell/Jolivette a few years ago and mine didn't even get to THAT size, one on the main and one on an early-on side vine - my soil was far from tested or exemplary, lol - it was just a Raging Bull plant! ahh, memories...
perhaps cut your watering in half by amount and/or frequency'd be good and also it may be suggested to seriously shade the plant - i see it as a Top Fueler that is spinning the tires and losing the race; some backing off, on something, is needed...lucky you, sort of----eg

7/3/2020 1:22:06 PM

South Dakota

Big rain events can cause them to blow up. I had a 250 lber blow itself up all over the place. Hard to clean up and quickly stinks like hell what you can't get picked up. Someone commented once that if you don't blow up a few, you aint pushing her hard enough. I don't know if there is any wisdom in the saying or not. I only grow one plant, so blowing a few up means ending the season.

7/3/2020 3:22:00 PM

Madison, WI

We have had a ton of rain and warm humid weather this summer

7/3/2020 4:10:17 PM

"If you ain't blowing 'em you ain't growing 'em"

This is the old saying and some of the top growers started that

7/3/2020 4:15:08 PM

"If you are blowing em then you ain't showing em"

I do believe author of both is Dave Stelts

7/3/2020 4:21:50 PM

Bethlehem CT

Sometimes that problem can be genetic in my opinion. Maybe you haven't done anything wrong.

7/3/2020 4:33:10 PM

Marshfield, Ma, USA

Many years ago, I thought adding some high nitrogen lawn fertilizer to the patch would be a good idea.Blew em all up. Suburban Gardener reminded me of that disaster. Live and learn LOL.

7/3/2020 7:06:03 PM

Madison, WI

In this case I don’t believe it’s genetic since it has happened to each of our 4 plants. I’m still waiting for big pumpkin to post my diary so you all can see but I know our nitrogen levels were a bit high on the tissue test

7/3/2020 7:17:01 PM

Georgia

It will be interesting to see what the old timers have to say. My nitrogen was the same as yours for two of my three plants. I know Rick j. has said that he has run his nitrogen up to 11k and yours was only 9k. I was surprised that your phosphorous was so low.

I hope people keep posting responses to your post.

7/3/2020 10:00:34 PM

Lakewood, WA

Oooops, sorry about the reminder, Pumpkineer!

Just for fun, I looked through last year's soil tests, and one featured 78 ppm of nitrogen (zoinks!), which got some laughs out of John Taberna at Western Labs, who then warned me that I "had enough nitrogen to blow my pumpkins UP! So, to prevent that, when your pumpkins are about the size of a basketball, flush your soil out with a whole bunch of water." I ended up adding quite a bit of water by the time they were basketball-sized for normal watering, and I only ended up with some superficial splits on the blossom end, fortunately. Good times, lol!

I'm also interested to hear what other experienced growers have to say about this topic.

7/3/2020 11:56:55 PM

Lakewood, WA

I'm more at the laughable stage still :-)

7/3/2020 11:58:42 PM

Grittyville, WA

I dont think its nitrogen. My guess would be excess potassium. My nitrogen is higher and no such splits. Out of curiousity what fertilizers have you applied? Have you applied any ammonium? Unfortunately the test for nitrogen is based on nitrate... so you dont know the ammonium. Perhaps ammonium and potassium. Interesting... thanks for posting the tissue test so we may learn.

7/4/2020 3:46:22 AM

Syracuse, NY

additionally, you have EXEMPLARY vine burying going on and those giants-to-be can't take it all just yet. too bad there were no old-timers here to notice that. perhaps you could, before any other pollinating goes on, flush out the excess Nitrogen/Nitrates and whatever else might be excessive and go from there. perhaps DOUBLING your watering is the solution in the interim. --- eg

7/4/2020 5:14:47 AM

Bethlehem CT

Yeah if all the plants are doing it, it's not genetic. I have had problems before if my plants are high in Nitrogen and then make and application of eagle fungicide. High Nitrogen and eagle can be problematic.

7/4/2020 10:02:08 AM

Grittyville, WA

Last year I was exploding them on a plant that had no vines buried and few roots. I posted tissue tests of two plants with nitrogen at about 15000 ppm that have not suffered this problem.

7/4/2020 10:35:05 AM

Grittyville, WA

But the source of the fertilizer might be an issue. Chemical fertilizer could be much more likely to do this than organic. In these two plants I had high nitrate because of organic sources. The plant that had exploding pumpkins last year was given chemical fertilizers.

7/4/2020 10:38:16 AM

Grittyville, WA

Rather than flushing your soil... giving the nutrients where you are deficient and allowing some further growth of the plant ought to temper the levels of mobile nutrients you have in excess (mostly potassium). I think it would be hard to wash potassium out... I think its amongst the least 'washable' nutrients. It would be one of the last nutrients to wash out. It might be better just to add the deficient nutrients and allow for some more growth. I think if you do this, starting with copper, you will get a pumpkin to hold together. If you can get a pumpkin past DAP 15 or so the excess potassium should not hurt them.

7/4/2020 10:46:46 AM

Grittyville, WA

Kelp might be an organic fertilizer that could throw them out of whack, if applied in excess. Let us know what fertilizers you have used?

7/4/2020 10:50:38 AM

Madison WI

Thanks for the great input guys, very helpful. We did amend the soil after the tissue test but I have not done another tissue test to see if it helped.

I have also posted our June feeding schedule if anyone cares to take a look. Seems to me the quote above "If you ain't blowing em, you ain't growing em'" is fitting. We have really juiced up our soil and have probably over-done the fertilizing. With the heavy rains and humid 90 degree weather here, I think have all contributed to this issue

7/4/2020 12:26:31 PM

Upa Creek, Mo

Does not sound like your typical BES (blossom end split). I have had many of those over the years and for me they were usually after day 20.

If it is all on all 4 plants, not genetic. The immediate thing you can do is slow your watering or don't water if it has been rainy.

How many inches in circumference are you growing a night when exploding?

7/4/2020 12:26:48 PM

Upa Creek, Mo

Wow, I just read my last sentence and that was poorly worded... I am talking pumpkins. lmao .

7/4/2020 12:30:02 PM

Madison WI

Also appreciate the compliment on our vine burying by pumpkinpal. As many of you will know, that is the absolute worst part of it all!! So much work and we have 4 plants. We bury them using manure compost along with some additives

7/4/2020 12:33:11 PM

Madison WI

We have a live video camera going on one of the plants and the growth was significant. We didnt actually measure the growth.
www.fatpumpkin.org if interested

7/4/2020 12:34:55 PM

Lakewood, WA

Fun website, bauch! Thank you for sharing, I have it bookmarked! I also like the blog section where you go into a bit more detail than in many of the Grower Diary entries here on this site, thoughtful treatment of the subject matter. (Many growers here on bp.com are really busy, I know!)

Do you have any pumpkins left anywhere on the vine that can be grown, or any females coming up that can be pollinated? I hope you aren't completely done for the season with such a nice patch going!

7/4/2020 1:49:30 PM

Madison, WI

We have pumpkins on all right now but the splits have set us back a couple weeks. We are on the third pumpkins now on 3 of the plants. They are now out 15-17 feet on the vine which I think is out a bit far in my opinion

7/4/2020 2:32:35 PM

I would read some of the top growers diaries and you might find that is where a lot of them are.

7/4/2020 3:11:37 PM

Lakewood, WA

Glad to hear you have something to grow, at least!

7/4/2020 3:14:45 PM

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2020&grower=33241&action=L

7/4/2020 3:16:14 PM

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=306507

7/4/2020 3:21:39 PM

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=306377

7/4/2020 3:22:58 PM

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=304219

7/4/2020 3:25:28 PM

Syracuse, NY

i appreciate being appreciated, for any thing and for any reason, lol---so, thanks for that---it means a LOT to me, no kidding! so, HOWWWWWWWW we gonna slow down and not have any more poppin' punkins?
i had mentioned shading the plant(s);
opinions from others will be welcome as i hijack this post temporarily with my own question(s): if i were a Raging Bull plant (and, if you ever see a raging bull, even in a video, it'll change your life) WHAT would i hate to see taken from me that would put out my 'fire'? water, heat and/or light. the soil is apparently 'dynamite', the vines are superiorly-buried, we cannot change the temperature, easily, the plants are...oh, yeah, at least one is a 1911. FIVE over 2K and one of them is the 2nd-heaviest in history. i'll guess you can hear the time bombs ticking when the wind stops for a moment---anyway, the idea i have is to shade the plant in an unusual weigh - if shade cloth is used by many growers for what seems to be, since i never have this problem, overheating/sunburning and so forth, who's to say just yet that SERIOUSLY...

7/4/2020 9:56:51 PM

Syracuse, NY

...reducing the sunlight getting to at least half the plant would NOT reduce its growing power devoted to whatever pumpkins are there to accept that pumpkin-growing power? hence, i crazily thought of the idea to shade cloth each LEAF by having a piece of shade cloth folded in half and simply slipped over each leaf and secured by not even black-metal-clipping to the leaf itself, but just enveloping the leaf with the shade cloth envelope and metal-clipping the corners. the small black metal clips probably wouldn't weight the leaves down, either, since they'd be on the stem end of the leaf. JUST the biggest leaves, probably;
in re-reading that, that might be just as tedious as burying vines again, but it'd be the 'coolest'-looking plant on the block, lol---with shade cloth the usual way, as the fruits were to grow beyond set points of soccer, basket and beach ball sizes, the shade cloth could be removed or drawn back incrementally to 'chemically-accommodate' the increasing size of the fruits. i guess TIME is of the essence, now, so, instant gratification and surety are essential. okay, enough outta me, again - i should step outside a for FEW minutes and see some illegal fireworks, lol---eric g

7/4/2020 9:57:25 PM

Madison, WI

Haha. I think pumpkinpal was inhaling too much fireworks smoke ;). I can’t even imagine the time it would take to implement that strategy. Having said that, I do think covering the pumpkin in some type of shade could help.

My June feeding schedule is now posted on my diary if anyone is interested in commenting.

7/5/2020 12:01:52 PM

South Dakota

Did somebody spike the watermelon?

7/5/2020 2:47:37 PM

Syracuse, NY

i'm not getting through to y'all. not shade the pumpkin(s)! the plant(s) need(s) to slow down---you guys figure it out---eg

7/5/2020 3:42:37 PM

Tyngsboro, MA

I had a similar problem to this two years ago. It was REALLY frustrating. Pumpkins would get to 20 days old or so and then split at the blossom end. I watered pretty consistently and wasn't applying excessive fertilizer.

A theory I have is that it was due to not enough Boron. Since then I payed more attention to Boron in my soil amendments at the beginning of the season and have also added a tsp or so at every watering. I haven't had the problem again. Hope it works out for you.

7/6/2020 4:59:22 PM

Madison WI

jamieg, did you have excessive rain when it happened on hot temps? Just curious

7/7/2020 3:56:45 PM

Tyngsboro, MA

Bauch1 - I don't remember anything special with the weather, but it was happening consistently on multiple pumpkins on more than one plant. They'd get to 18 or 20 DAP and then split. I ended up getting some pumpkins to the scales with late pollination.

7/7/2020 6:31:18 PM

Tyngsboro, MA

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=296596

This is what I wrote in my diary at the time about what happened

7/7/2020 6:33:15 PM

Madison, WI

Thanks jamie

7/8/2020 11:32:38 AM

Tyngsboro, MA

No problem Bawk. It's really disheartening to have that happen to them, hope it stops happening for you.

7/8/2020 10:06:27 PM