pumpkins!

Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:22 pm

i have 2 pumpkin plants which are doing great but they have grown thru my rabbit fencing and are in my yard. Where they broke thru the fence they are probably 2 to 3 feet off the ground and right there one of them is sproutin a pumpkin. It's the size of a softball now. Any ideas on how to support it?

Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:00 pm

Put some stakes in, and make a pumpkin hammock for it. That will support it pretty good.

Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:12 pm

yeah if it is climbing the fence you should sling the fruit or somehow get it off the fence. If that is the case yous pantyhose or a t-shirt or something to hold it. Just make sure it is something that will be able to expand with the pumpkin, as well as be able to support it's weight.

Mon Jul 20, 2009 11:06 am

hi, just reading this post and found myself asking questions - in slight panic lol - i have 2 pumpkins growing, they have 2 sets of big leaves with more coming in the middle i think! only problem is the size of the area they've got and how big they are gonna get? i think i wil need a hammock for them? how do i do this? also how long do they take to grow pumpkins- like see little ones sprout? can i feed them to make them bigger?
kind regards
jane

Mon Jul 20, 2009 11:53 am

Last year, my pumpkins immediately staged an escape from their designated garden bed. One grew out onto the lawn and headed for the apple tree. The other one grew a side branch -- both branches climbed the garden fence, and refused to come down. :lol:

One branch grew two pumpkins balanced on the top edge of the wire fence. They had grown in such a way that the vine itself was supporting their bottoms. Only thing I had to do was to stuff some straw between the pumpkins and the wire fence to keep the fruits from getting bruised. The other branch reached up above the wire garden fence to the 5' PVC picket fence, and proceeded to grow along the top rail. :roll:

This one also grew two pumpkins, but without regular places for the tendrils to hold onto, the vine itself was barely hanging on (I wove the vine along the top of the pickets), so I supported the fruits with slings out of one of my kid's old nylon tights that were tied onto the pickets above the top rail.

Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:42 pm

Poor kids going around naked for the benefit of your pumpkins! :wink:

As said though if you grow pumpkins forget about your property they get pretty big. Though I grew several good sized pumpkins last year under a willow tree, meaning 4 or so hours of direct sun every day. So bring it!

Dono

Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:06 pm

cool, cant wait to see some of the little darlings start to grow! my daughter has donated all the clothes they need if she can carve the pumpkin at halloween!!! lol "one step at a time!!!" the leaves are big but no sign of any yet!
jane

Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:27 pm

How much space is typically needed for pumpkins? This is my first year planting a small garden, and I have pumpkins in one corner that are growing like mad! At first they started to grow away from the other vegetables and towards the sun, but I just came home from a weekend up north and they are almost completely covering several of my beets. I planted them according to the spacing guidelines on the seed packets, but this is proving to be much too small an area. Can they be 'manipulated' in any way to keep them under control?

Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:51 pm

I had a 1' square grid marked with strings tied across the top of a 15"H wire garden/border fence around the garden bed. Before they escaped the garden bed, the pumpkins grew along the top of the strings, so I planted lettuce underneath. Maybe you can do something similar where your beets are growing to lift the pumpkin vines up and away from the beets, and also put up a vertical string/wire trellis as I described above to forestall the pumpkins from going any further. The vertical trellis needs to be sturdy enough to support the weight of the pumpkins. You should train them (move the growing tip of the vines around and guide the tendrils to where you want them to grab on -- you'll need to do this every day) to open up gaps for the beets.

Tue Jul 21, 2009 6:47 pm

brilliant idea!! that would do the job a treat! I'm already having visions of pumpkins bursting out of the veggie patch! how long would you say they take to grow to a biggish size?
kind regards
jane

Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:58 pm

If you mean when do the vines start taking off, this year, I direct seeded pumpkins (Kakai) on 5/30 and they've started to "take off" from the base leaf cluster to stretching vines when they were around 6 wks -- now they're about 3~4 feet long. This *could* be typical pumpkin plant behavior.

If you mean when do they bear pumpkins and when do the pumpkins mature, that would depend on the variety you planted. Your seed packet should tell you the days to maturity (if it doesn't, DON'T get that brand seeds any more!)

Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:34 pm

the seeds i planted were from last years halloween pumpkin!!! so i guess theres no clue there! typical lol

Wed Jul 22, 2009 6:07 pm

General guide for pumpkin spacing...

http://www.ruppseeds.com/divVegetable/p ... .htm?mnu=3

Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:54 pm

hi there, thanks for the link, i've had a look and its very useful! fingers crossed now that they're not too close for fruits???

jane