Growing
Watering
Pumpkins need about 1-inch of water per week, either from your hose or rainfall. For best results, water plants deeply in the morning and on very hot afternoons — especially during fruit set — and do your best to direct water straight to the plant roots. Keeping pumpkins leaves dry is one of the best ways to avoid rot and common diseases like powdery mildew.
Fertilizing
Blending compost or aged manure into the soil before planting helps pumpkins grow better and encourages larger fruit production. After that, side-dress plants with additional aged manure or compost mixed with water as needed and feed with a high nitrogen fertilizer when the plants are about 1-foot tall and the vines are just about to run. When flower buds form, switch to a high phosphorus fertilizer to fuel rapid pumpkin growth.
Pruning or Maintenance
Covering pumpkins with row covers early in the season can reduce some pest problems, but covers need to be removed before flowering to allow for pollination. Bees and other pollinators are essential for pumpkin growth, so avoid using pesticides whenever possible and consider growing flowering companion plants near pumpkins to increase pollinator activity. Placing a bee house in your garden is an effective way to draw bees in too.
Careful pruning can reduce disease, increase fruit size, and is key if you want to grow prize winning pumpkins. To do this, pinch off the fuzzy ends of pumpkin vines after a few pumpkins form to stop vine growth and focus the plant’s energy on fruiting. Once the fruit develops, remove all but the best 1 to 3 pumpkins per plant as well as all late blooming flowers, prune the main and secondary vines to 10 to 15 feet, cut away the smaller, tertiary vines, and bury the cut vine tips in the soil to optimize fruit development.
As the fruit matures, turn pumpkins carefully to encourage even growth. Placing a thin board, stone, or piece of tile under pumpkins can protect fruit from rot and pest damage as well.
Tip: If your first flowers aren’t forming fruits, that’s normal. Both male and female blossoms need to open for pollination to occur. Patience is key!
Seasonal Care
Maintaining a regular watering and fertilizing regimen is essential if you want to grow the best pumpkins. It’s also a good idea to add mulch around plants to retain moisture and suppress weeds. When needed, weed carefully to avoid damaging delicate pumpkin roots and vines.
If you’re growing pumpkins on a trellis, support developing fruit with a hammock or old nylon stocking to prevent vine breaks.
Types
Pumpkins come in different sizes and colors and can be used for different purposes. Athough all pumpkins are technically edible, some are better for carving or display, while others are ideal for cooking. Knowing how you’d like to use pumpkins will help you select the very best varieties for your goals!
- Miniature pumpkins like ‘Jack Be Little’ and ‘We-B-Little’ are great for ornamental use and small spaces. They’re also super productive and easy to grow.
- Carving pumpkins like ‘Autumn Gold’ or ‘Merlin’ are the pumpkins you want for jack-o-lanterns.
- Pie pumpkins like ‘Sugar Treat’ and ‘Peanut Pumpkin’ are prized for their sweet flesh and can be used for pies, soups, curries, and purees.
It is sometimes difficult to time the planting pumpkins so that they mature right around October; it can be a juggling act of variety (which can affect days to maturity), environmental conditions, and other factors. See above article for signs of when to harvest pumpkins (such as even coloring, skin has lost its initial shine, tendrils nearest the fruit are withered). If it appears that your pumpkins are fully ripe, it might be best to harvest them now, as keeping them in the pumpkin patch may encourage disease, insects, and animals. Follow the storage guidelines in the above article. Before curing, it may help discourage bacteria if you wash the pumpkin with a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water, and remove dirt etc. Once cured, store in a cool, dry, dark place, with good air circulation. Temperature should be about 50 to 55F, and relative humidity about 50 to 75 percent. Do no store with apples. Under proper conditions, the pumpkins may last 2 to 3 months.
Sometimes pumpkins can abort when just forming due to poor pollination. They may also be affected by too much moisture over a long time (causing wilting and fruit to drop), too little water (drought), or by high temperatures (above 70F at night or 90F in day). If temperatures in your area are in the 90s, shade the pumpkin fruit during the day, for several days after a flower is pollinated. Make sure the plants have plenty of nutrients to support fruit development (but not too much nitrogen, which may deter fruiting), as well as sunlight. Insect damage to fruit, or the vine in general, can also cause fruit to abort--check for squash bugs, cucumber beetles, tarnished plant bugs, squash vine borer, etc.
It would be best to thin them to 2 to 3 plants per hill. Select the most vigorous looking to keep, once they get a few inches tall. Snip off the ones you don't want at the base (do not pull them out, or it may disturb the roots of the others you want to keep). Thinning down to just a few plants reduces competition for water and nutrients (pumpkins are thirsty and hungry plants), gives each plant more room to grow (they love to sprawl!), and allows more air circulation (very important for combating powdery mildew, a troublemaker for pumpkins). It sounds like you have a great pumpkin patch coming along! Good luck!
If you are sure that your plant has powdery mildew, cut the diseased vines and leaves to try to avoid its spread. Be sure to clean your pruners with a diluted bleach solution (about 1 part bleach to 9 parts water) before each cut, so as not to spread the disease. Toss the affected vines in the trash -- do not compost or bury in the soil, as the disease will linger. Powdery mildew can spread through the air; it thrives in warm temperatures and humid conditions (such as from dew or rain), especially if there is poor air circulation. Avoid overhead watering -- water at the base of the plant instead so as not to wet the leaves, and water in the morning, so that the sun can dry surfaces before nightfall.
Spray the top and undersides of remaining healthy leaves, as well as the vines and stems, with fungicide registered for edible plants/pumpkins. For more information, see:
http://www.almanac.com/pest/powdery-mildew
If you have pumpkins on the vine that are close to mature size, leave them on the apparently healthy vine as long as possible, without encouraging rot, to help them to ripen as much as they can. When powdery mildew infects a vine, sometimes the yield, taste, and quality of the pumpkins will be affected (such as reduced size, and sunburn), especially if they can not reach full maturity. If you must harvest a developing pumpkin, such as from a diseased vine, then you can try to ripen it by washing it, drying thoroughly, and setting it out on a sunny patio or similar dry spot in the sunshine (take in at night). Or, you can choose a spot indoors that receives strong sunlight. Rotate the pumpkin during the day to expose all sides to the strongest sunlight. Sometimes, if the pumpkin is past a certain point in its development, it will eventually turn orange (within a few weeks).
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