Clankie's Perfect Pumpkin Pie (PPP)

This is my recipe for perfect pumpkin pie. The biggest difference from a standard pumpkin pie recipe is in the preparation, but the results will justify the extra work. You will need a pie plate, pie crust (I prefer either a graham cracker or homemade crust), a double boiler, a mixing bowl, and a sturdy whisk. If you don't have a double boiler, you can place a metal mixing bowl over a soup pot with water in it. I also always recommend buying organic, and if anyone wants to know the incredibly irritating process of preparing a pumpkin pie completely from scratch, ask and ye shall receive.

Attack of the clones

If you were to ask me today what the single most important skill for any grower to know, I wouldn't hesitate before I would say asexual propagation.  Don't get me wrong, everything else is very important.  However, if you can't clone, you will either be forever growing from seed, or relying on outside sources for your genetics.  Growing from seed is also time consuming, and plants from seed are much harder to control in terms of size than plants grown from clone.  That said, I love growing from seed, as I like new things, and the element of discovery that growing from new seed stock brings to my garden is very welcome.  On the other hand, I grow a few strains from clone, and always have a few mother plants lurking around in the veg room.  First, plants grown from seed often take 4 weeks or longer to be ready for flowering, while a clone cut from a healthy vegetative plant can actually be rooted and ready to induce flowering (depending on plant size desired) within 3 weeks or less.  Secondly, there is something to be said for reliability, and if you find a strain that performs well for you and that you are extremely satisfied with the final product thereof, I say keep it forever.  Often, if you find yourself having to ask whether or not you want to let a strain go, I say keep it, because if it was that good in the first place, you will likely come to regret losing it.  Growing from seed can (depending on the breeder you use) lead to unwelcome and costly results, even if you have an excellent setup.  Growing from clones of your own plants, on the other hand, you already know exactly what you are getting into before you start flowering.  There are multiple ways of cloning, I am going to cover my two favorite ones, the two that have worked the best for me in the past and that I have the most experience with. 

Making your own sweetener

There's a substantial amount of dialogue available on the importance of carbohydrates during a plant's flowering cycle, and there's a substantial cottage industry based off of selling you products to carbo-load your plants.  However, whether you garden using organic or synthetic nutrients, you can very easily create your own sweetener using organic molasses and distilled water.