Gardening season has wrapped up but you may still have questions. For answers, turn to Ask an Expert, an online question-and-answer tool from Oregon State University’s Extension Service. OSU Extension faculty and Master Gardeners reply to queries within two business days, usually less. To ask a question, simply go to the OSU Extension website, type it in and include the county where you live. Here are some questions asked by other gardeners. What’s yours?
Q: I live in Marion County and I am attempting for a second year to grow pumpkins in my raised bed.
Last year I had great vine growth (12-15 feet) and male flowers (20-30) but no female flowers. Any suggestions? Also, when would you suggest planting the seeds? Should I transplant an already established plant? Any suggestions on types of fertilizer, and at what sequence and timing would be welcomed. – Marion County
A: You didn’t mention how many vines you grew last year, but my first suggestion is to have several if you have space. They can trail out of the raised beds and intertwine if needed.
Be judicious about fertilizing. Too much nitrogen will create a lot of foliage at the expense of flowers.
The male flowers typically begin to open before the female flowers, so patience is needed. As you may already know, the female flowers have a large ovary on the stem just below the bloom while the males have only a simple stalk. The attached photo shows the hand-pollination process which is a fool-proof way of ensuring the female flowers are pollinated. Be prepared to pollinate the female flowers as soon as they are open.
OSU Extension Service
You may have better luck with open-pollinated varieties rather than hybrids; however, if you are hand-pollinating, it shouldn’t really matter.
You can start pumpkins indoors right now if you want to get a jump on the season. Make sure the seed starts stay warm and have lots of light. Keep them only inches from the fluorescent lights, and keep the lights on for 14 hours per day.
Alternatively, you can wait until the soil is thoroughly warm outdoors to direct sow. Pumpkins are sensitive to cold temperatures in both the air and the soil, so it isn’t worth rushing them outdoors. A soil thermometer costs only a few dollars and is a good investment. Soil temperatures are much more reliable than calendar dates. (More about this in the links below.)
I hesitate to recommend fertilizers without a soil test to determine which nutrients are needed and how much. Excess nutrients are not only expensive, but they degrade the environment. If you have healthy soil that has been enriched with organic matter over several years, you should be able to get by with adding mature compost in three or four times during the year. Spread it on the surface of the soil (ie. don’t till it in.)
If you do get a soil test, this publication will help you determine how much fertilizer to use.
We highly recommend mulches to maintain soil moisture and temperatures. Straw, woodchips or black plastic all work well.
Here is a link to a growing guide that should address most of your questions. (Please note that it is from Cornell University in New York, so the suggested cultivars may not apply to Oregon.)
Suggested pumpkin varieties for Oregon can be found here.
The following article is about growing giant pumpkins. Even if you are not interested in going for the prize, it includes a number of growing tips that may be helpful.
What do you do if your garden bed gets used as a cat box?OSU Extension Service
Q: We have raised garden beds and while outside today, we noticed a fairly recent hole dug in one of them, sometime in the last week I would assume, and found a pile of cat feces.
Do we need to get rid of the dirt in the garden box? Just that area of the box? Is there something we can add to the soil?
Many people in a gardening group I am a part of say to remove the feces and the dirt around it, but I just want to make sure we are doing the right thing to keep our family safe this gardening season. We are going to put some chicken wire over the top of the beds to keep the cats out until planting later this year. – Marion County
A: Using a shovel, you should remove the cat feces from your garden as well as the soil immediately around it. If you happen to be pregnant, you should be especially careful not to come into contact with it.
Chicken wire or a hoop structure over and around raised beds are the best way to prevent animals from digging or contaminating the soil. – Lynn Marie Sullivan, OSU Extension Master Gardener
Q: We have a large, old English walnut tree that is growing close to a power line. The power company wants to “prune” the tree down to 14 feet below the wire and 12 feet on the side, which would be very close to the trunk. (There are no branches above the wire.)
To me that seems excessive. How tall would a walnut tree grow in one year? If I look at the branches, the yearly growth seems to be 3 to 4 inches.
I looked at what happened to a tree that was pruned by the ‘”round over” method in a recent article on Oregonlive.com. I’m worried that the excessive pruning the power company is proposing would produce similar results. In other words, just make it worse. We’ve kept the branches pruned 5 feet away from around the wire and we were told by our arborist that 5 feet was sufficient. What is your opinion on this? Is the power company going to kill my tree? – Polk County
A: You are correct in observing that the wrong pruning method may not be helpful for trees, especially those that have not had regular pruning to preserve their shape, health and productivity. However, pruning using correct techniques is actually beneficial for all these factors. You can read about correct pruning (pages 7 and 8), and other issues pertinent to this species here.
So long as these precepts are followed (by either the power company or your arborist), there is no reason to believe the tree’s health will be compromised. In fact, as the above article indicates, “The less a tree is pruned, the larger it will be. However, some pruning is necessary in order to build a strong, healthy tree.” Assuming you trust your arborist, perhaps s/he could prune it correctly initially, and see if the power company is satisfied with that work. I hope this is helpful. – Kris LaMar, OSU Extension Master Gardener
Native Oregon trilliumOSU Extension Service
Q: I want to verify. Is this a giant wake robin, or a large white, or Pacific trillium? – Lane County
A: This is Trillium ovatum, our native trillium with a flower that is borne on a stalk rather than right against the leaves. There are a number of “common” names for this, such as Pacific trillium or western trillium, but as in many cases, the same common name can often refer to multiple species, so they are not so reliable. In this case, giant wake robin, and large white trillium are (usually) used for two other species of trillium, neither of which is native here. – James Mickley, OSU Herbarium curator
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