From

Location

Message

Date Posted

East Jordan, MI

These plants keep amazing me over and over again. Early on when I had to decide between 2 plants because they were running into each other. Since I picked the one with a very small split in the crown, I decided to move the other one for two reasons. To see if I could transplant one that was about 4 feet long and throwing sides. And to keep it in good enough shape to use if the split caused a real problem. The transplant went well (only lost about 4 big leaves and the plant was doing great. About a week ago, it was getting in the way again. The plant it was backing up had totally healed and I was hating that I was going to have to go ahead and kill it. Then I decided to see if I could clone it and put it in a pot. That worked well too, so now I know how to do that.

Anyway...enough of why I pulled it. It was close to some of my sides and I didn't want to disturb any of the plant's roots that I was keeping, so I cut the tap roots and crown even with the ground. That was 2 days ago.

It has been very wet up until the last 4 days which have been very sunny and the ground is finally drying out on the very top inch or so.

I was able to bury some vines yesterday, and finish up today. As I was finishing, I saw a line about 5 feet long and 8 inches wide that was WET. I went to investigate closer and saw the most incredible thing I think I have ever seen in gardening. The crown, and every tap root (6 of them) were DRIPPING water about a drop every two seconds. The dang things were still trying to feed the plant! AMAZING!!!

6/20/2010 8:09:46 PM

DeWitt, Iowa

Wow that is pretty sweet!

6/20/2010 10:33:09 PM

Minnesota([email protected])

Yes, these plants are amazing.
One year I pulled up a plant, not sure why....maybe it was a plant that a pumpkin split on. Anyway, some of the female flowers opened after pulling the plant, and they were pollinated. I'm guessing the plant ended up with a half dozen pollinated females that got to baseball or softball size. I think these all formed from the reserves in the plant, as I saw no roots extending into the soil(actually I think the plant was out in the thrown out on the lawn.

6/20/2010 10:48:33 PM

Pataskala,OH

That happened to me when I pulled up one of my backups. It was interesting.

6/21/2010 12:35:19 PM