In the late summer of 1994, I was working weekends as a CNA at the Good Samaritan Home in Quincy, IL, while attending nursing school during the week to receive my LPN license.
The charge nurse (RN) on the floor that I was regularly assigned to came to work very late one particular Saturday morning. She was a straight woman, but for all practical purposes, she resembled a butchy little bulldog-like lesbian. Nothing broke this woman. She was a strong leader, and nothing seemed to phase her one way or the other. On this Saturday morning, around 9:00 AM, I was starting to get worried. Janet was normally at work at 7:00 AM. She had not called the nursing home to report car trouble, or that she was ill. We heard nothing from her.
When she did manage to get to work, she almost crawled through the door, and slumped back to her office down the hallway, away from the rest of the crew and the patients. The second she hit the doorway, I noted that her eyes were beet red and swollen from crying. The weeping and wailing sounds that came from her office were a pretty good indicator that she was very upset! I thought she had a car accident on the way to work, or that she had just experienced a death in the family.
I was the only staff member that was brave enough to enter her office, and ask Janet if she was "OK", and that she should perhaps go back home for the day. In between her gasping sobs, and the copious tears flowing down her cheeks, she managed to tell me the details.
This woman taked extreme pride in her pumpkin patch each year. Janet's pride and joy was growing the huge pumpkin (from seed) that usually sits in a big antique horse-drawn wagon at the entrance of county fairs. Each year, giant pumpkins get bigger and bigger. You can find resources on-line for seeds for proven giant pumpkins. They might not be cheap, but with GREAT care, they will grow a giant for you! This year's record breaker, for example, weighs 1,810.5 lbs. Janet's prize show pieces often reached the 1,000 pound mark.
Before her unhappy trek to work, the evening before, the Quincy, IL area had a severe thunderstorm. The storm knocked over a wooden fence on Janet's farm, and broke the stem of this year's giant pumpkin. At the time of the mishap, the pumpkin weighed in at 600 lbs. A 600 lb. pumpkin is a huge beast, by most people's standards, but it was barely over half way grown, according to Janet's previous prized pumpkins. (Say that without using a "P"!)
The care for her "babies" goes far beyond the normal pumpkin patch in the average garden. The seeds from previous strains of giant pumpkins are carefully selected. When the vine starts to grow, only ONE pumpkin per vine is allowed to mature. If pumpkin growers would allow more than one pumpkin to grow on a vine, each giant gourd would be competing for nutrients, thus making each one smaller than their full potential size. In addition, when the pumpkin is very small, she places it on a wooden skid, to avoid the bottom rotting out of the giant as it grows. Her other secret is this:
Janet was close friends with several local doctors. They carried sample packets of birth control pills (yes, human birth control pills!) in their offices. She would ask them to reserve for her any outdated packets. They would willingly give away their surplus to her. This woman was in her late 50's - there was no actual need for her to have the birth control pills, other than to feed her giant pumpkin. Janet found the right solution to mix the ground birth control pills with, then with an IV bag, line and needle, she would attach her 'birth control IV' to the stem of the growing pumpkin. It is this solution that made her already-huge pumpkins even bigger. Trust me when I tell you that these pumpkins are purely for show, and not for consumption!
Personally, I found a great alternative to using Miracle Gro on my own plants. My standard fertilizer is, in fact, Miracle Gro, and I strongly recommend my readers to fertilize their plants at the required intravals. Humans and animals can't survive on water alone, and neither can plants.
At any rate, when I had lots of fish aquariums (fresh water! The salt could be damaging!), I found a recipe from an early 1980's Mother Earth News Magazine that I that I started using in the early 1990's:
(Each ingredient is responsible for a nutrient that plants crave!)
* One 5 gallon bucket of water that you drain from your aquarium (or pond!) as you do a water change
* the heads of an entire book of unburned matches (either cut the heads off, or throw the entire book of matches in)
* 2 tablespoons of dishwashing liquid
* 2 tablespoons of Epsom salts
* 2 rust nails, a rusty hinge, or something rusty of similar size
Mix all ingredients, and let sit one week. You can dilute this mixture, and water more frequently, or use this solution on outdoor plants once a week, and once a month on indoor plants.
The results:
I started that spring with 6 tomato plants, but the squirrels ate 4 of the 6, leaving me with 2. In November of that year, I froze, canned and gave away as many as I could. I still had to throw away over 100 huge tomatoes from those two vines - and that was after I had actively kept the vines tended to during the summer months.
I also grew standard "Heavenly Blue" Morning Glories on a chain link fence. When these Morning Glory vines bloomed, I rarely saw a green leaf because of the thick coverage of blooms! What a wonderful wall of BLUE each morning! At the end of summer, after the vines died, we I had to get help to pull the vines off the fence. We rolled up that thick mat of vines, and it looked like one of those huge rolls of baled hay. Our next task was to load it on the back of a truck, and take it to a natural landfill!
Then...the marigolds. Yes, standard marigolds. Their average height should have been 18", and the heads on the flowers should have been no more than an inch and a half across. BEFORE they fell over, these morning glories grew to 6 FEET tall, with their stems as big as your wrist, and the flowers on the end of these honkin' stems looked like giant football mums!
These days, Mark won't allow me to have an aquarium (he's weird like that!), so I use off-the-shelf Miracle Gro, with decent results. BUT...the Miracle Gro is **absolutely** no comparison to this Mother Earth News find!
Move over with your birth control pills, Janet! I'm on my way up! :)
- Michael
The charge nurse (RN) on the floor that I was regularly assigned to came to work very late one particular Saturday morning. She was a straight woman, but for all practical purposes, she resembled a butchy little bulldog-like lesbian. Nothing broke this woman. She was a strong leader, and nothing seemed to phase her one way or the other. On this Saturday morning, around 9:00 AM, I was starting to get worried. Janet was normally at work at 7:00 AM. She had not called the nursing home to report car trouble, or that she was ill. We heard nothing from her.
When she did manage to get to work, she almost crawled through the door, and slumped back to her office down the hallway, away from the rest of the crew and the patients. The second she hit the doorway, I noted that her eyes were beet red and swollen from crying. The weeping and wailing sounds that came from her office were a pretty good indicator that she was very upset! I thought she had a car accident on the way to work, or that she had just experienced a death in the family.
I was the only staff member that was brave enough to enter her office, and ask Janet if she was "OK", and that she should perhaps go back home for the day. In between her gasping sobs, and the copious tears flowing down her cheeks, she managed to tell me the details.
This woman taked extreme pride in her pumpkin patch each year. Janet's pride and joy was growing the huge pumpkin (from seed) that usually sits in a big antique horse-drawn wagon at the entrance of county fairs. Each year, giant pumpkins get bigger and bigger. You can find resources on-line for seeds for proven giant pumpkins. They might not be cheap, but with GREAT care, they will grow a giant for you! This year's record breaker, for example, weighs 1,810.5 lbs. Janet's prize show pieces often reached the 1,000 pound mark.
Before her unhappy trek to work, the evening before, the Quincy, IL area had a severe thunderstorm. The storm knocked over a wooden fence on Janet's farm, and broke the stem of this year's giant pumpkin. At the time of the mishap, the pumpkin weighed in at 600 lbs. A 600 lb. pumpkin is a huge beast, by most people's standards, but it was barely over half way grown, according to Janet's previous prized pumpkins. (Say that without using a "P"!)
The care for her "babies" goes far beyond the normal pumpkin patch in the average garden. The seeds from previous strains of giant pumpkins are carefully selected. When the vine starts to grow, only ONE pumpkin per vine is allowed to mature. If pumpkin growers would allow more than one pumpkin to grow on a vine, each giant gourd would be competing for nutrients, thus making each one smaller than their full potential size. In addition, when the pumpkin is very small, she places it on a wooden skid, to avoid the bottom rotting out of the giant as it grows. Her other secret is this:
Janet was close friends with several local doctors. They carried sample packets of birth control pills (yes, human birth control pills!) in their offices. She would ask them to reserve for her any outdated packets. They would willingly give away their surplus to her. This woman was in her late 50's - there was no actual need for her to have the birth control pills, other than to feed her giant pumpkin. Janet found the right solution to mix the ground birth control pills with, then with an IV bag, line and needle, she would attach her 'birth control IV' to the stem of the growing pumpkin. It is this solution that made her already-huge pumpkins even bigger. Trust me when I tell you that these pumpkins are purely for show, and not for consumption!
Personally, I found a great alternative to using Miracle Gro on my own plants. My standard fertilizer is, in fact, Miracle Gro, and I strongly recommend my readers to fertilize their plants at the required intravals. Humans and animals can't survive on water alone, and neither can plants.
At any rate, when I had lots of fish aquariums (fresh water! The salt could be damaging!), I found a recipe from an early 1980's Mother Earth News Magazine that I that I started using in the early 1990's:
(Each ingredient is responsible for a nutrient that plants crave!)
* One 5 gallon bucket of water that you drain from your aquarium (or pond!) as you do a water change
* the heads of an entire book of unburned matches (either cut the heads off, or throw the entire book of matches in)
* 2 tablespoons of dishwashing liquid
* 2 tablespoons of Epsom salts
* 2 rust nails, a rusty hinge, or something rusty of similar size
Mix all ingredients, and let sit one week. You can dilute this mixture, and water more frequently, or use this solution on outdoor plants once a week, and once a month on indoor plants.
The results:
I started that spring with 6 tomato plants, but the squirrels ate 4 of the 6, leaving me with 2. In November of that year, I froze, canned and gave away as many as I could. I still had to throw away over 100 huge tomatoes from those two vines - and that was after I had actively kept the vines tended to during the summer months.
I also grew standard "Heavenly Blue" Morning Glories on a chain link fence. When these Morning Glory vines bloomed, I rarely saw a green leaf because of the thick coverage of blooms! What a wonderful wall of BLUE each morning! At the end of summer, after the vines died, we I had to get help to pull the vines off the fence. We rolled up that thick mat of vines, and it looked like one of those huge rolls of baled hay. Our next task was to load it on the back of a truck, and take it to a natural landfill!
Then...the marigolds. Yes, standard marigolds. Their average height should have been 18", and the heads on the flowers should have been no more than an inch and a half across. BEFORE they fell over, these morning glories grew to 6 FEET tall, with their stems as big as your wrist, and the flowers on the end of these honkin' stems looked like giant football mums!
These days, Mark won't allow me to have an aquarium (he's weird like that!), so I use off-the-shelf Miracle Gro, with decent results. BUT...the Miracle Gro is **absolutely** no comparison to this Mother Earth News find!
Move over with your birth control pills, Janet! I'm on my way up! :)
- Michael
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