A couple of months ago, I set out to plant Benwood’s second annual pumpkin patch (and shared our tips for planting your own) with one goal in mind: I wanted to grow the biggest pumpkin I’d ever personally seen in real life.

I bought seeds that could produce pumpkins up to 300 pounds! I applied organic fertilizers that would plump my pumpkins up with essential nutrients! I culled all but one pumpkin off of each plant to ensure the whole vine was supporting just one pumpkin, the chosen one, to give its nutrition to!

And I don’t think I’ll have the biggest pumpkin I’ve ever personally seen in real life. In fact, I think by the time the pumpkins are done growing this month, I’ll be left with pumpkins that are kinda small.

Womp womp.

I knew there was a chance of this happening.

Side note: did you see 2022’s pumpkin patch? Check it out here!

For starters, a woodchuck ran through my patch a few weeks ago and took what looks like one bite out of each pumpkin before trampling the vines, so growth pretty much stopped. I’d be real mad at the woodchuck if it wasn’t kind of a psychotic thing to do with very little personal gain. I think it was just having itself a good time!

There’s also the fact that I’m growing on a hillside that, despite being terraced, doesn’t really allow for an even distribution of water and nutrients. The pumpkins planted highest on the hill basically withered and died from a lack of water as it would run off to the bottom, and the pumpkins at the bottom got lots of water, maybe even too much.

All of that to tell you: my pumpkins might not have met my personal size goals, but I sure do love my little patch. I get joy from seeing the bright orange globes on the ground when I look out of the breakfast room window, and I love how whimsical and funky pumpkin vines are. I also planted some baby white pumpkins, the kind so tiny they fit in your palm, and those all did great. I’m counting that as a win!

I’ll reassess and make a plan for a more successful pumpkin patch in 2024, but for the time being, imperfect is perfectly fine with me.

Happy first week of fall, love bug, and thanks for stopping by the blog!