Successful Pumpkin Growers? Can you give advice, tips, suggestions, everything needed for beginners? Weather,

watering, preparing the ground, kind of fertilizer, spraying, tools, when to start - anything at all? Also, should pumpkins be smashed back into the ground for the following season or does a new process have to be started every year? Thank you!Successful Pumpkin Growers? Can you give advice, tips, suggestions, everything needed for beginners? Weather,
We grow over 2500 hills of pumpkins each year on a family farm in midwest. Over 10 years of growing pumpkins and we are still learning more each year.


As for the beginner's basics.....


First find good seeds. If you want normal, common jack o'lanterns you can pay a couple dollars for variety mix at any walmart or green house. These are okay but if you are looking for more speciality there are lots of websites and catologs with hundreds of interesting varieties,sizes,colors, and shapes.


Second you need space. If you are a normal gardener and just want to add pumpkins to your crop the best bet is bush pumpkins. They come in nice tidy plants that don't vine out and produce on average 5 to 10 normal jack o'lanterns. Smaller bush pumpkins produce more and mini ornamental bush pumpkins will keep putting out pumpkins as long as you keep picking them. Love Bush pumpkin plants! They are easier to tend to and keep weeded. Most are disease resistant.


Best website to start looking for pumpkin varieties and great descriptions is Harris Seeds site. You can get free catalogs with good colored pictures, tips and complete pumpkin growing directory.


http://www.harrisseeds.com/


****Tip for growing smaller vining varieties of pumpkins.....go vertical. I fence all my miny vining pumpkins.Its keeps plants off ground, you can watch for pests and is much easier picking.


If you have lots of room and are considering growing a large number or giant size pumpkins.....have your soil tested. You can buy soil testing kits at walmart for couple bucks or if you are in rural area there are local elevator /coops or your county extension office will all help you check out your soil and show you what deficiences it may have or what supplements you need to add. We use a lot of compost each year. The bigger the pumpkin the more it needs to grow. We are lucky to have nice loamy river bottom soil that we give it a little bit of lime each year and homemade compost in spring and then use compost to add around hill of pumpkins. It keeps weeds down.I also fertilize with a vegetable mix of 2-2-10 mix of granulated organic fertilizer. It costs about $10 for 25 lbs but it is worth it. I get it as local greenhouse. You don't want to overfeed pumpkins with too much nitrogen or you will get lots of vine and a couple pumpkins. I fertilize heavy in spring and then every 4 to 6 weeks. I stop completely in August when vines start really producing pumpkins and vines start dying back.


We plant in early May til the end of May. The soil temperature needs to be above 65 degrees for over a week before you want to plant seeds.Cold temperatures and wet cool soil will stunt seeds and some will rot in ground.


We hill all our pumpkins. After your soil is ready and been rototilled we go and hoe up mound after mound ....3 to 10 feet apart (depending on variety) and plant 4 to 6 seeds per hill. If you get seeds from large companies like Harris Seeds their seeds are treated to combat disease and some are bug resistant. If you get seeds that are not treated it just means time watching and caring for them.


After you plant seeds water in really good and make sure they keep moist for next couple days. Not sopping wet. In about 5-10 days they will sprout. The first month is critical. Keep weeds down by either hoeing or mulching. We hoe ALOT. Ask my kids...we all have our own hoe.


Really when plants are small we go hill by hill and slowly build soil up around stem up to leaves until sturdy and keep doing this all summer.This helps with wind damage and keeps base of pumpkins unexposed for nasty squash borers to tunnel in. Cucumber beetles, birds, and rabbits are your enemy at smaller stage. We either spray or sprinkle ';Seven'; or ';Eight'; (insecticide) on plants every 4 to 6 weeks to keep bugs away.You can get ';Seven'; at walmart for couple bucks. Have some on hand. You will go out and find 2 cucumber beetles on your pumpkins in the morning and find 200 hundred an hour later.


Once plant starts flowering make sure you don't spray insecticide when flowers are open and bees and other insects are pollinating your crop. Otherwise you will kill the lovely bees and you will have less pumpkins or misshapen pumpkins. We usually spray late afternoon.


Keep weeds back. You need to use smaller rototiller or hoe when plants are small to stop weeds from growing and taking over. ....and they will pretty quick. Use your hands to keep smaller weeds from growing around hill. Use hoe around base of hill and use rototiller between rows.


You also have to keep your plants watered adequately at early stages. For the first two months if you let your plants suffer from not watering them you can stunt the plant and you will get less pumpkins. We use drip hose and watering cans and sprinklers if it dry season. A good rain every week to 10 days is enought to keep you from watering.


We have 3 rototillers...one big John Deer w/back rototiller on it and a medium one and smaller model. They are for early stages...once the vines take over and if you have kept it weeded in early spring all you do is sit back and discover how fun it is to find lovely orange pumpkins growing under the large prickly vines.oh yeah...and watch for the dreaded bugs....and pray it doesn't hail or wind storm destroys your plants.Or here we have deer come in and take big bites out of sweeter fleshed pumpkins. (use Deer B Gone on rags that you tie on sticks around your garden )Their are lots of worries growing pumpkins.


Come August you will begin finding your pumpkins are beginning to be ready to be picked and in September you will need some good pruners for cutting vine. Cut as long as stem as possible and most important for big pumpkins...


DO NOT CARRY OR LIFT BY STEM!!!!


You will be sick if you have had your eye on gorgeous pumpkin for weeks ...finally cut it and lift it up and the step pops off. Dead pumpkin. It happens. Not all the time but it is best to lift pumpkin up and carry gently.


In fall any extra pumpkins we throw out in compost pile and whatever deer don't eat gets churned in for spring compost.


LOTs of website out there for beginner pumpkin growings





http://www.pumpkinnook.com


http://www.backyardgardener.com/pumkin.h鈥?/a>


http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/pumpkins/





Otherwise just Google ';pumpkins';.or ';pumpkin seeds';...there are thousands of useful websites.


Good luck.Successful Pumpkin Growers? Can you give advice, tips, suggestions, everything needed for beginners? Weather,
How to Grow Pumpkins


Tips


Warnings





Click this link:


http://www.ehow.com/how_1990_grow-pumpki鈥?/a>
Full sun, LOTS of water, dig a hole about 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep ..back fill it with straight aged cow manure..plant four of five seeds per whole..