From spooky jack-o'-lanterns to homemade pies, learn how to plant, grow, and store pumpkins
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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!
Types
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 homegrown specimens and then bake them for a tiny treat. Vine variety. Days to maturity: 90 to 100.
- ‘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.
- 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 ginormous pumpkin. Vines will spread to 25 feet, so space is a must. Days to maturity are 130 to 160, so plant early! Thin to the best one or two plants. Feed heavily but keep cultivation shallow. Remove the first two or three 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 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. ‘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.
Gardening Products
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.
Comments
Once your pumpkins are mature with that deep orange color and hardened rind, you can harvest them instead of holding the fruit in the field--to avoid pests and disease. Cure them for 10 days as discussed on this page. Under the right conditions, you can store pumpkins 8 to 12 weeks.
The male flowers come first and will fall off. About 7 to 10 day later, the female flowers will show up. Then, the bees can pollinate. If you want to speed things up, you can take a Q-tip and move the pollen from the male flower to the female flower in the morning when both flowers are present and open.
If foliage is going down from powdery mildew, this may help with ripening, too.
Once your pumpkins are mature with that deep orange color and hardened rind, we recommend that cure them and store under proper conditions, if it is feasible. This way you avoid disease and pests. If you need/want to hold fruit in the field for pick your own or any other reason, using a protectant fungicide (eg chlorothalonil) to deter black rot, powdery mildew and some of the other fruit rots. Under the right conditions, you can store pumpkins 8 to 12 weeks.
Sunny, dry Texas weather can be good for pumpkins as well as the soil is kept moist and cool with mulch and you water deeply. Rot usually comes from humidity or damaged vines. Check your vines to make sure not are damaged. If they are, you should remove the pumpkins and let them ripen in the sun off the vine. Also, put boards or stones under your pumpkin to avoid rotting. After curing, pumpkins will last months if properly stored.
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Once the pumpkin is pollinated, the fruit should get ripe in 45 to 55 days. Your standard Halloween pumpkin starts out green and once it turns orange with a hard rind, it's ready to be harvested. You need to pick it, cure it, and store it -- and perhaps the vine will grow more fruit. However, if your pumpkin is a large pumpkin squash type (Cucurbita maxima), they turn orange early and just keep getting oranger and oranger. When the rind gets hard and mature, then it's time to harvest.