From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Watlington, UK

This morning I decided to cut the main vine from our Paton plant, in the hope that I can get one of the secondaries to continue as a main.
All the advice is that ribbon vines are no good, but I was wondering what exactly is no good about them and what would have happened had I persevered with it over the course of the season?

6/12/2017 11:24:03 AM

Anamosa, IA BPIowegian@aol.com

Ribbon vines become very brittle and break easily. It is very difficult to impossible to get a bend in them at the pumpkin to prevent stem stress. They also tend to set several secondary vines at nodes and become a big mess of vines. If you can get them terminated and fully buried, you have less chance of breaking it off. And you can better manage the secondary to get a proper bend in it.

6/12/2017 11:49:46 AM

Colorado

There hard to work with-not as flexible-bendable and prone to cracking.A lot of bad things can happen training a pumpkin as it grows on one. Its been done but its much easier to go with a normal vine trained as the main.

6/12/2017 11:51:17 AM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

Plus they have a billion leaf joints where the females form. They are just a mess. You did the right thing

6/12/2017 1:08:02 PM

Watlington, UK

Glad I did the right thing ;) I went back to have a close look today and there are vines, flowers, leaves sprouting all over the place. I can see it being a right mess in a few weeks. I may just rip the whole thing out.

6/12/2017 3:32:52 PM

Deer Park WA

Sometimes if you carefully prune out the excess buds you can get the flat vine to fork out into a double vine and train one into a main and or a side vine. We did this with our 1910 and it is becoming one of our most robust plants, best of luck.

~Gerry

6/13/2017 1:18:29 AM

Deer Park WA

Should have read oe main and the other fork a side vine. Pesky auto spell,,,

6/13/2017 1:21:30 AM

Streator ,Illinois

had a ribbon vine on my paton plant also , I waited till the secondaries started and choose one as my new main and now have a 4 ft. main , had to stake the hell out of the stump till the new main started to grow .
Gene

6/13/2017 2:35:53 PM

Upa Creek, MO

I also had one on my 1495 this year... I hit it heavy with Nitrogen and water trying to get it to grow out or split, but it was just a mess. I finally cut the head off the snake and chose the best secondary as the new main. That was about a week ago and the plant is playing catch up.

6/13/2017 3:43:33 PM