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Hydroponic Atlantic Pumpkin

Super David

Super David

Well here I am giving it another crack! Trying to beat my own record of 18kg last season.
So far so good! Plenty of time left in the season and I have one swelling up very quickly!
 
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Its been two days since this photo was taken!
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This is what it looks like now!
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Last season I grew rock melon...that might be what you guys call a cantalope.  Hydroponicly and they went to just over 5kg...which is 11lbs.  They went very well..they love being hydroponic. so do cucumbers. 
Watermelon I havn't had much success with. I've had them grow but I've never had them get to a nice size.  but that could just be my hydroponic skills.  I've learnt more since then.
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This is last seasons pumpkin.  18kg - 39lb.   If I can beat that I'll be happy!!
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I did the official over the top measurments on my pumpkin at 3am this morning, its total inches was 58.1.  I just measured now at  6.30pm...15.5 hours later and its total inches is 63.1!! 5 inches! I like the way this is going!
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definitely better than store bought! But I couldn't tell you if they tasted better because they were hydroponic or because mine were vine ripened rather than picking them green and like the shops do.
 
no new photos...I'm keeping this pumpkin under wraps! Literally! It got attacked by a rat a couple of days ago and it had bite holes in it.  I dont know if its going to make it. I've set traps everywhere and I've put mint oil everywhere near the pumpkin and put alimunium foil  on the vine and milk crate.  I'm hoping if it pulls through from the bites I can protect it with the traps and mint.  so far I'm sitting at a total of 84 inches...its still growing 5 inches every day, thats a good sign
 
well it stopped growing not too long after the rat attack and nutrient change. I'd like to blame the rat but I think it was probably the nutrient change that stopped the pumpkin growing.
It started going soft with this heat wave, so I chopped it off and weighed it.  17.8kg.  Which is 200g heavier than last season. Still have a few months left to grow so hopefully I can pollinate another pumpkin.  I've actually only managed to polinate 1 out of about 15 attempts.
 
Wow. Those are wicked huge. Good work on your hydroponic melons. I've got to go check my seed drawer now, might have to pop a seed and give it a whirl.

What ppm and ph do you have your melons at when the vine is large?
 
slade122 said:
Wow. Those are wicked huge. Good work on your hydroponic melons. I've got to go check my seed drawer now, might have to pop a seed and give it a whirl.

What ppm and ph do you have your melons at when the vine is large?
 
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I've been aiming for a ph of 6.5 and I dont really work off ppm, I go by ec. I've been going for an ec of 2.2.  But I have to say I could well be doing things wrong, once my new nutrients arrive I'll be throwing in some more nitrogen.  I've got the flowering nutrients in now and the vine growth has slowed right down...too much I think, I need more vine for more female flowers and more leaves to grow a big pumpkin.  All grow or all flower doesn't seem to be the way to do it...I think a mix of the two is the way to go.
 
Amazing. That is quite a strong mix. Ph is within bounds of many of my other plants. Thanks for the comment on mixing bloom and grow formulas, it will help me greatly once I give it a try. I assume vine type plants like that with lots of foliage would require more nitrogen to keep growing, so it makes perfect sense.
 
slade122 said:
Amazing. That is quite a strong mix. Ph is within bounds of many of my other plants. Thanks for the comment on mixing bloom and grow formulas, it will help me greatly once I give it a try. I assume vine type plants like that with lots of foliage would require more nitrogen to keep growing, so it makes perfect sense.
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yes the tips of the vine tend to cluster with flowers and leaves without gaining much length, I think they do like alot of nitrogen, I get the feeling they could just survive and probably thrive with just the grow part of the nutrient
 
You've got to have bloom for quality fruits though. I found that increasing my nutrient strength increased my overall yeild in weight by much more than it did in number of fruits.

It seems like with hydroponics you can really fine tune growth characteristics, and really maximize the quality of virtually any crop. I've recently even started some onions with success (hydro root vegetables always seemed like a weird concept to me). I've seen some really massive yellow squash grown in dwc at the hydroponics retailer, I never thought that a yellow squash could ever possibly get that big.

I believe that I have read that with hydroponics you can achieve 2-3x the nutritional content of a soil grown veggie.
 
well I guess it depends on what your growing the atlantic pumpkin vine it not doing much being on just bloom, the flowers are coming up but but not as often as they should.
 
The triamble pumpkin I have growing from the same reservoir is flying along! it doesn't care, the vine is gaining length and it has healthy secondaries coming out of it too. The flowers are coming up quickly.
 
The rockmelon,cucumber and mango reservoir is on the grow nutrients and they are flowering and making fruit nicely. 
 
When I compare the npk on the grow and flower, the grow nutrients actually has more potasium than the flower.  The np is the same on both of them but the grow has one point more of potasium.  Which doesn't make sense to me.  Thats why I think plants would be ok just on the grow. Well maybe with my nutrients anyway.  Dutch master Advance.
 
When I was at the hydroponic shop the other day, (They have a Massive MASSIVE hydroponic garden out the back) they said they have everything on grow nutrients and everything but the fruit trees is on an ec of 3.0.
I might try upping the ec to close to three and see how it goes.  I know thats really high but they have such a massive range of plants and they all seem ok with 3.0.
 
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