[HN Gopher] Our Better Nature: Great Pumpkins
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Our Better Nature: Great Pumpkins
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 49 points
       Date   : 2024-10-22 19:04 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.saturdayeveningpost.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.saturdayeveningpost.com)
        
       | sharpshadow wrote:
       | Would be fun if somebody would grow them in a big acrylic glass
       | cube to make them come out square.
        
         | bookofjoe wrote:
         | Start small: https://www.amazon.com/SCI-Cuisine-International-
         | Square-Pres...
        
         | quesera wrote:
         | Brings back memories from the early web:
         | https://www.ding.net/bonsaikitten/
        
         | steveBK123 wrote:
         | You could use a square melon mold
         | https://www.amazon.com/Watermelon-Growing-Mold-Sapodilla-Tra...
        
         | dtagames wrote:
         | Disney has been doing Mickey-shaped ones for a while[0] in the
         | greenhouse at The Land at Epcot.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.delish.com/food-news/a29003871/disney-world-
         | epco...
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | No pics of the title subject? Pics or it didn't happen.
        
             | dtagames wrote:
             | I saw it in person ages ago. Didn't take any pics, lol.
             | Sorry.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Yeah, but unless you wrote the article, the fail isn't on
               | you
        
         | pvaldes wrote:
         | They would have a burst acrylic cube on return. This fast
         | growers are simply too big and too heavy to be contained
        
       | pvaldes wrote:
       | (ehum... vegetable steroids ->
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberellin ).
       | 
       | Genetic and care help, a lot, but there are fertilizers and
       | "fertilizers".
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | I dimly recall a _Daedalus_ DREADCO column which, starting from
         | hydroponics, was exploring the limits of artificial vegetative
         | growth, and came to the conclusion that under the right
         | conditions, it was all a question of how much energy one was
         | willing to pump in.
         | 
         | Maybe we need a fleet of satellites beaming formed microwaves
         | down to our giant Cucurbitaceae?
         | 
         | (my wife kept prompting me to harvest my radishes this summer;
         | by the time I actually got around to it, they'd grown to sizes
         | ranging from a small potato to an entire fist)
        
         | Mistletoe wrote:
         | I was hoping you were wrong but nope. We can't even have
         | pumpkin growing contests anymore without PEDs.
         | 
         | >Gibberellic acid: In the young fruit stage of pumpkin, apply
         | 10-20mg/L gibberellic acid solution to the young fruit, apply
         | once every 5-7 days for a total of 2 to 3 times, which can
         | obviously promote hypertrophy and accelerate maturity, which
         | can improve quality.
         | 
         | >https://m.plantgrowthhormones.com/info/for-pumpkin-
         | planting-...
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | > especially as they mature and gain from 30 to 50 pounds per day
       | 
       | That's about 0.25 grams per second. Or 15 grams per minute. If
       | put on a scale, i am assuming you could witness it growing in
       | near real-time.
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | The greatest part of that continuously added mass is just water
         | pumped from the soil.
         | 
         | When you compute the added dry mass per second, divided by the
         | mass of the plant, the rate is still big, but much less
         | impressive.
        
           | adriand wrote:
           | That's what I'm going to tell myself when I stand on the
           | bathroom scale in the morning. "I'm not fat, if I just
           | compute my dry mass, I'm in superb condition."
        
             | Swizec wrote:
             | > That's what I'm going to tell myself when I stand on the
             | bathroom scale in the morning. "I'm not fat, if I just
             | compute my dry mass, I'm in superb condition."
             | 
             | So fun fact: I like to weigh myself before and after long
             | runs on sunday (15mi+). 5lbs to 7lbs difference. All water.
             | You really can sweat off 7lbs of your weight in a couple
             | hours if you want to.
        
               | bookofjoe wrote:
               | Reminds me my little brother in high school, running for
               | hours in a rubber suit to make his weight.
        
               | basch wrote:
               | probably mostly respiration?
        
       | ReptileMan wrote:
       | And not a single Blandings Castle or Lord Emsworth joke.
        
       | joe8756438 wrote:
       | I've had terrible luck growing pumpkins until this year when I
       | put five root bound starts in the former bedding of my goose
       | flock. All the starts were tangled together in a two gallon pot,
       | didn't even bother separating. Those plants easily produced
       | 200lbs of pumpkins.
       | 
       | My neighbor, who gave me the starts and took much greater care
       | with the plants, had all of his die from various pests and
       | diseases.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | I had a pumpkin patch growing earlier this year that was
         | decimated by bugs. I tried every "organic" method of treating
         | the bugs to no avail. It was all just for the lulz, and
         | specifically wanted to avoid pesticides. The bugs won
        
           | joe8756438 wrote:
           | My takeaway from that experience is that nutrition is the
           | best way to prevent disease/pests. once there's a problem
           | it's probably too late.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | The plants were healthy until the bugs. The vines were
             | growing, the leaves were huge, and they had just started to
             | produce flowers. I've never seen the type of bugs, some
             | stink bug type of beetle, in my yard ever before. Now that
             | I've removed the dead plants, there's no sign of the bugs.
             | For as many as there were, I'd expect to see some
             | remaining. It's always a learning experience growing new
             | plants
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | Giant vegtable growing contests are ancient and in certain
       | pacific island populations,social status is closely conected to
       | the size/quality of the yams that someone grows the first true
       | gigantic pumpkins were grown just down the road from me,and giant
       | pumpkins are growing (hidden) everywhere,highly competitive and
       | subject to ANY tactic to grow/get a bigger pumpkin or judging by
       | the paranoia,finding a way to induce splitting in a rivals
       | pumpkins,as any hole or split,suspicious marks,disqualify a
       | pumpkin from competition
        
       | simonw wrote:
       | "In 2023, Minnesota resident Travis Gienger, who teaches
       | horticulture, aptly enough, broke the world record for the
       | biggest pumpkin. His 2,749-pound entry beat the old record, set
       | in 2021 by an Italian farmer, by 47 pounds."
       | 
       | I was there for that! I used my photo of the moment he beat the
       | world record in my blog post about GPT-4 vision prompt injection
       | attacks: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Oct/14/multi-modal-
       | prompt-inj...
       | 
       | Here's my Mastodon thread from this year's competition. Travis
       | competed (and won) again but didn't get a new world record,
       | though another competitor did set the record for the largest
       | pumpkin ever grown in California:
       | https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/113306150061413548
        
         | cactusplant7374 wrote:
         | How much does that cost to grow?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-26 23:04 UTC)