Growing pumpkins

[necroerotica]

Hi folks – I’m looking for a bit of advice here.


This year I decided to grow some pumpkins, from seed, with my 3yr old – so come Halloween it’d be something a bit more special, carving out ones we grew ourselves.

So, we planted about 25 or so in planters back in April or May. Some didn’t come up, we gave a few away, and planted the remaining 13 plants in 3 different locations.

Now, here’s the thing – for the most part, they grew into big healthy plants (leaves on some are approx. 16 inches across I’d guess), and produced flowers.
But of those 13, we’ve only had 6 pumpkins grow – again, some quite large now, some a bit, well, pathetic.

So basically, is there a ‘trick’ to growing pumpkins? Now, I can use google as well as the next person, but I’m wondering if anyone has any *practical* advice or experience? I know the size of fruit will differ naturally, but what’s bugging me is the relatively low yield, especially given the apparent health of the plants.


Some points to bear in mind –

- we’re based in the UK, weather has been excellent – humid/hot for the most part.
- This is in the country, with a *lot* of insects showing interest in the flowers when they appeared.
- We also tried some ‘manual’ pollination – rubbing the male flowers inside the female. No difference.
- All 3 planting areas are well removed from each other (at least 100 yards), and the soil types appear to a layman to be different – this doesn’t seem to have had any influence on the number of pumpkins produced – 2 per area basically.
- seeds used were a combination of seeds retained from last years carving, and packet-bought seeds.


Any advice for future years?
As it stands, we’ll make a note of what appears to be the most successful plant and be sure to keep the seeds from it for next year.

 

[SpecialKay62]

No good advice, sorry! The only thing I would say to try is fertilizer. I threw an old pumpkin on my compost pile about 2 years ago and it goes wild every year. Also, your pum-pums need a little longer to get some size and heft to them...like late September, early October. Good luck and happy carving. I'm guessing the 3-year-old is delighted with whatever comes up! And you can make a tasty treat from the seeds.

 

[necroerotica]

No good advice, sorry! The only thing I would say to try is fertilizer. I threw an old pumpkin on my compost pile about 2 years ago and it goes wild every year. Also, your pum-pums need a little longer to get some size and heft to them...like late September, early October. Good luck and happy carving. I'm guessing the 3-year-old is delighted with whatever comes up! And you can make a tasty treat from the seeds.

Well, and here's something else that was confusing me about the more feeble plants – we’re in the country, and there was actually 2 barrow-loads of ‘fertiliser’ obtained from one of the neighbouring farms and mixed well into the soil at the planting points.

Seriously. If I’d been as well fed as this lot, I’d either be chronically obese or competing in the Mr. Olympia atm

We have an Ulster-American folk park here, where they grow Corn and pumpkins on the American ‘side’, and they appear to be further advanced than mine.
Obviously they share the same weather conditions, so I have to assume that they either got luckier, have more experience (most likely, hence me asking here), or just weeded out the poorer ones before the general public got to see them

 

[webber1998]

Couple things:

After initial flowering did you notice flowers turning brown and dropping off?

Is foliage dense and green? And how long are the runners ?

 

[necroerotica]

Couple things:

After initial flowering did you notice flowers turning brown and dropping off?

Is foliage dense and green? And how long are the runners ?

The majority of flowers (both on successful plants and not) were bright yellow, quite large, and lasted approx a week? Opening and closing as light dictated. They didn't change colour significantly before falling off.
Actually, a number the plants are still producing flowers, I'm hoping at least one or two more produces fruit, although it'll obviously be far behind the others.

Foliage (both on successful plants and not) is deep green for the most part, and very thick. I'd say the plants are approx. a foot and a half high. My dad even removed some of the leaves from the center of some plants to give their flowers a decent shot at the light.

A few of the plants are quite feeble, but even then, 2 of them have produced fruit.

Runners is an odd one - only one of the plants produced a runner of any significant length, and it was also one of the ones which *didn't* produce any fruit yet, although it still has a few healthy female flowers.

 

[webber1998]

Note that our plants only have between 2 and 4 pumpkins per plant. Of course, yield and size do depend upon which type of pumpkin you plant !!

We add fertilizer ( Nitrogen rich ) when we perpare the soil. Lots of compost for each hill ( approx 12-18" down ). We grow our pumpkins in FULL sun. Five or six plants to a hill which are thinned out to the two best looking plants after a few weeks. As a general rule, pumpkin plants do NOT like wet soil so we water infrequently, but A LOT at a time. Once we get a few pumpkins, we then add fertilizer that is a little higher in potassium to sustain the fruit. We trim off any extra runners to help the plants out once all of the fruit is set. A little extra watering when it is REALLY hot and dry.

Without seeing the plants, but just speaking typically for my region( leaving out problems with insects ):

Lush plants with poor fruit = too much water humidity.
Short/no runners = bad seeds or too little Nitrogen
Small fruit = bad seeds or not enough fertilizer.

It is worth it to buy the BEST seeds that you can get. We have a friend who is a local farmer so we typically get all of our seeds through him.

 

[necroerotica]

Note that our plants only have between 2 and 4 pumpkins per plant. Of course, yield and size do depend upon which type of pumpkin you plant !!

We add fertilizer ( Nitrogen rich ) when we perpare the soil. Lots of compost for each hill ( approx 12-18" down ). We grow our pumpkins in FULL sun. Five or six plants to a hill which are thinned out to the two best looking plants after a few weeks. As a general rule, pumpkin plants do NOT like wet soil so we water infrequently, but A LOT at a time. Once we get a few pumpkins, we then add fertilizer that is a little higher in potassium to sustain the fruit. We trim off any extra runners to help the plants out once all of the fruit is set. A little extra watering when it is REALLY hot and dry.

Without seeing the plants, but just speaking typically for my region( leaving out problems with insects ):

Lush plants with poor fruit = too much water humidity.
Short/no runners = bad seeds or too little Nitrogen
Small fruit = bad seeds or not enough fertilizer.

It is worth it to buy the BEST seeds that you can get. We have a friend who is a local farmer so we typically get all of our seeds through him.

This is the sort of thing I'm looking for; initially, the most obvious issue is the water - I didn't realise they weren't so keen on it, so I've been watering them 'as normal' - i.e. along with the rest of the flowers, seedlings etc there are around the place.

I agree about the seeds; if I'd been thinking ahead I'd have marked each of the seeding pots with what type of seed I used (store bought, or from last years store-bought pumpkin) and see if there was any sort of consistency there.

But, you live and learn. This year as I said, I'll be making a point of keeping the seeds from whichever fruit turns out the best - hopefully that'll help. But it's interesting to note that each of the fruit-bearing plants has only produced one fruit per plant, rather than the 2-to-4 you mention.

I'm wondering if that's because of the 'breed' of plant....

 

[sunandshadow]

I heard one thing you can do, if you want to make one super giant pumpkin, is feed that one milk, I think the technique is to make a small cut in the vine right before it gets to that pumpkin and use a funnel to put the milk in. The resulting pumpkin cannot be eaten, it's just for carving.

 

[webber1998]

I heard one thing you can do, if you want to make one super giant pumpkin, is feed that one milk, I think the technique is to make a small cut in the vine right before it gets to that pumpkin and use a funnel to put the milk in. The resulting pumpkin cannot be eaten, it's just for carving.

Hmmm... Interesting... I've never heard that one before. I'd be afraid in my fields here of damaging any of the vines. TOO many bugs that attack them.

I'm wondering if that's because of the 'breed' of plant....

It sure may be the breed of the plant.

Also forgot to mention that I "force" all of the vines to go down the rows that I made for them. So in one 12 foot by 6 foot row I'll wind up with maybe 16-20 pumpkins.

I water every day or two until the plants are established and then one or two times a week, depending up on the weather.

 

[sunandshadow]

Hmmm... Interesting... I've never heard that one before. I'd be afraid in my fields here of damaging any of the vines. TOO many bugs that attack them.

Well you cover the hole with plastic wrap or a plastic bag when you are not putting milk in. But yeah bugs are always a problem.

 

[coastal-boy]

another thought...where did you get the seeds? From another pumpkin, or from a pack of seeds? Many plants are actually hybrids. They grow great the first year. But if you take seeds from those and grow them the following year you will lose approximately 1/2 the productivity each consecutive year until it regresses back to the mean of the parental inbred lines.

never mind you posted the answer before i finished this