Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Pumpkins
The Almanac Garden Planner - Use It Free for 7 Days!
Plan your 2025 garden with our award-winning Garden Planner.
Growing
- Use row covers to protect plants early in the season and to prevent insect problems. However, remember to remove covers before flowering to allow pollination.
- Bees are essential for pollination, so be mindful when using insecticides to kill bugs or fungicides to control fungi. If you must use it, apply only in the late afternoon or early evening, when blossoms are closed for the day. To attract more bees, try placing a bee house in your garden. Or, grow colorful flowers near the patch.
- Pumpkins need 1 inch of water per week. Water deeply, in the morning and on very hot afternoons, especially during fruit set. Avoid watering foliage and fruit unless it’s a sunny day. Dampness invites rot and disease.
- Add mulch around your pumpkins to retain moisture, suppress weeds, and discourage pests.
- Weed gently; pumpkins have shallow roots that can be easily damaged. Also, take care not to damage the delicate vines; the quality of the fruit depends on them.
- Side-dress with aged manure or compost mixed with water.
- Small vine varieties can be trained to grow up a trellis. Larger varieties can be trained upward, too, to support the fruit, usually with netting or old stockings.
- Pumpkins are heavy feeders. Side-dress with aged manure or compost mixed with water. When plants are about 1 foot tall, just before vines begin to run, fertilize regularly with a high-nitrogen formula. Just before the blooming period, switch to a high-phosphorus formula fertilizer.
- If your first flowers aren’t forming fruits, that’s normal. Both male and female blossoms need to open. Be patient.
How to Grow a Bigger Pumpkin
- After a few pumpkins have formed, pinch off the fuzzy ends of each vine to stop vine growth and focus plant energy on the fruit.
- Pruning the vines may help with space and fruit formation. Pumpkins produce main vines (from the base/center of the plant), secondary vines from the main ones, and tertiary vines from the secondary vines. All may have flowers. Once the fruit has developed, prune the main and secondary vines to 10 to 15 feet and remove the tertiary vines, if desired. Bury the cut tips in the soil.
- Or, gardeners looking for a “prize for size” pumpkin might select 2 or 3 prime candidates and remove all other fruit and vines.
- As the fruit develops, turn them—with great care not to hurt the vine or stem—to encourage an even shape. Slip a thin board or stone or piece of plastic mesh under pumpkins to protect them from rotting on the soil.
- To grow a giant pumpkin, try ‘Dill’s Atlantic Giant’ jumbo variety. Fruit can grow to 200 pounds on 25-foot vines. Plants need 130 to 160 days to mature, so start seedlings indoors, then thin to the best 1 or 2 to plants.
- Feed heavily and cultivate shallowly.
- Remove the first two or three female flowers to generate more leaf surface before a plant sets fruit.
- Allow one fruit to develop. Remove all other female flowers.
- Ensure the vine does not root down near the joints to avoid breakage.
- Learn more about growing prize-winning pumpkins!
Every pumpkin has a best purpose. When choosing a pumpkin, think about what you want to do with it. All pumpkins are technically edible, but ornamentals are better for carving, and other pumpkins are best for cooking.
Miniature Pumpkins
Miniature pumpkins are very productive and easy to grow, sometimes producing up to a dozen fruits per plant.
- ‘Jack Be Little’, a miniature variety, is dual purpose. Store-bought shiny (painted) ones make an ideal decoration for a holiday table. Remove the seeds from farm- or home-grown specimens and then bake them for a tiny treat. Vine variety. Days to maturity: 90 to 100 days.
- ‘We-B-Little’ is an All-America Selection winner, and ‘Munchkin’ is another great miniature pumpkin.
Pumpkins for Carving
- ‘Autumn Gold’ is great for carving and decorating. All-America Selection winner. Vine variety. Excellent for Jack-o-Lanterns. Days to maturity are generally 100 to 120 days.
- The larger ‘Magic Lantern’ and ‘Merlin’ are great for carving and decorating.
Giant Pumpkins
- ‘Dill’s Atlantic Giant’ jumbo variety can grow to 200 pounds. Great for those who want to grow a giant pumpkin. Vines will spread to 25 feet, so space is a must. Days to maturity are 130 to 160 days, so plant early! Thin to the best one or two plants. Feed heavily but keep cultivation shallow. Remove the first 2 or 3 female flowers after the plants start to bloom so that the plants grow larger with more leaf surface before setting fruit. Allow a single fruit to develop and pick off all female flowers that develop after this fruit has been set on the plant. Take care that the vine doesn’t root down near the joints to avoid breakage.
- ‘Big Max’, ‘Big Moon’, ‘Jack O’ Lantern’, and ‘Funny Face’ are some of the best giant pumpkins for carving.
Perfect Pumpkins for Pies
- ‘Sugar Treat’ is excellent for cooking and baking. Days to maturity are generally 100 to 120 days. ‘Hijinks’ and ‘Baby Bear’ are both All-America Selection winners and have sweet flesh for pumpkin pie.
- ‘Cinderella’s Carriage’ is also perfect for pies or soups.
- ‘Peanut Pumpkin’ also produces very sweet flesh and can be great in pumpkin pie or pumpkin puree.
Colorful Decorative Pumpkins
- ‘Jarrahdale’ has blue-green skin and makes for great decorations.
- ‘Pepitas Pumpkin’ is orange and green.
- ‘Super Moon’ is a large white pumpkin.
Cooking Notes
- See how to clean a pumpkin for cooking.
- Don’t forget about the seeds! Roast them with salt or cinnamon for a tasty treat.
Catherine Boeckmann
ADVERTISEMENT
Old Farmer, You answered so many questions I had. My 6 year old grandkid loved it too!
Hello,
IAM so thankful to whoever put together this agriculture message.
IAM here in Uganda and want to grow these vines seriously.I have not been employed but I feel this project will do it for me.
Thank you so much!
Hi, Rochelle! This is a delightful message to get on a gray day. THANK YOU for taking the time to get in touch. Happy to hear that you’ve got your grandkid—son? daughter?—interested in the Almanac and, we presume, gardening. Can we take just a minute to suggest that he/she might also enjoy The Old Farmer’s Almanac for Kids?! You can read about it here (and buy it, if you chose): https://store.almanac.com/product/old-farmers-almanac-kids-volume-6?list=catalog&position=7
We just want to let you know that kids can’t put it down (and parents can’t wait to pick it up and read it themselves)!
Have a wonderful day and bountiful season!
i do not understand why the pumpkins i have planted are growing good but as soon as it grows, after about 5 days its still small and becomes yellow and falls down!! why is that happening? please help someone!
I live in the Pacific NW (on the north Oregon coast) and the rains are getting heavy. Should I leave the pumpkins on the vines? Some of the vines are getting mushy and the fruit is still green. The rainy season has started and my vines are starting to deteriorate, but the fruit is still green. Should I harvest now or let them stay on the vines till the vines are done for? A neighbor already took one to make soup and said it was fine.
If the vines are getting mushy, keep an eye on the pumpkins themselves, which may rot. You might want to harvest the pumpkins soon, especially if the mushy stem area is close to the pumpkins. You can then try to ripen them off the vine. Sometimes this works.
To do this, cut the pumpkin from the vine, leaving about 4 inches of healthy stem (if possible). Wash it, dry it thoroughly, and set it out on a sunny patio or similar dry spot in the sunshine (take in at night). Or, if it is still rainy, 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).
I planted some pumpkin seeds from an organic pumpkin that I bought at a co-op.
The seeds were about 5 years old or older when I planted them. I planted the seeds in a big container. The pumpkins that appeared were about 1 inch in size and fell off the vine. What did I do wrong?
That is great that you got pumpkins from seeds 5 years or older; seed viability for pumpkins is said to be about 4 or 5 years. However, it appears that the pumpkin fruit aborting when small might be a pollination or growing condition issue. Sometimes developing fruit can abort if the plant is stressed or injured, especially high temperature (high 80s or 90s F in day, 70s at night). Drought or flood can also cause this symptom, as well as insect or disease damage. Check to make sure the soil pH is optimum. You might also try hand pollinating to help proper pollination.
i started growing this orange flower..... thought that was all i was growing.... then the vine started to grow everywhere.... now, months later i actually have something about 9 pumpkin looking fruits on the vine..... but they're about the size of a childs head.... sorry for not having a better example.... maybe 5 to 6 inches wide..... some of the earlier ones are turning an orangish color, but not the deep orange that one would expect from a pumpkin.... very excited that i actually grew something but don't know what to do.... i live in Austin, TX and it's getting close to halloween. Which means that wether will be unpredictable at best.... i want to finish what i accidentally started but i don't know where to go from here... help please....
I have 3 pumpkins that are still partially green and on the vines. Since the days have gotten shorter the garden isn't getting as much sun. I was wondering to get them to turn orange would it be better to leave them on the vines, which are still green and living, or to pick them and leave them on my back deck which gets more sun and warmth?
