Click on a thumbnail picture below to see the full size version. 8 Entries. Wednesday, April 8 View Page Had to auger some post holes in the patch and saw five feet of solid clay. Bev noticed that some of it looks blue. I'll make sure not to get any of that on me.   Thursday, April 9 View Page My sister had a new deck put on her house, so I got the old deck boards. Thank you Sis.   Sunday, April 12 View Page Add some 4 X 4s to the decking and I ended up with 3 - three sided structures I can fill with dirt and grow pumpkins in. No more growing in rock hard clay. I owe a big thanks to Mr. Ian for this. I got to ask him two questions in GB last year and one was, "Do you have any solutions for growing in hard clay?" He said quickly, "If you can, grow on it instead of in it. What a simple solution. Thanks Ian.   Sunday, April 12 View Page I filled this structure with some old wood I found in all places . . . the woods. Just a rotten pile of logs that had been sitting there awhile, but looked like it had some mycelium in it. I drug it out of the woods and filled the lower part of my enclosure with it. On top of that, I put another foot or more of inexpensive compost, right from the Chisago County Compost Site to grow the plants in. I will be using a lot of Ron's Pumpkin Pro hoping the mycorrhizal inoculant will grow down from the roots and tap into any nutrients the wood has to offer. I don't know if that will work or not, but I do know the competition is very tough and I am going to have to think "Out of the Box" and take some chances to compete with the intelligence and ingenuity of the growers on this site. You're all amazing. Fusarium and nitrogen lockup are two scary things I should probably learn about.   Monday, April 20 View Page Joe Ailts brought this root display to Green Bay last year. It shows how deep the roots can grow, and helped me determine how deep my dirt should be. Thanks Joe.   Saturday, May 23 View Page I dug the soil out of my structure to fluff it up before planting and found out last year's roots grew down about 14 inches.   Sunday, June 28 View Page I'm hoping big females make big pumpkins.   Saturday, July 4 View Page Happy 4th of July everyone.