What should you put under your pumpkin vines?

[PinkPetalPolygon]

I have a gourd patch, pumpkin patch, and zucchini patch. Well. They are together. I'll comment on my spacing and/or possible spacing disaster in the future, that's another story, anyway:

1. What should I put under the pumpkin vines?

I think last year we used dead grass as mulch and that worked alright. When I grow Armenian cucumbers I put a little piece of cardboard underneath the fruits so they aren't touching the ground, but those grow so fast it barely matters...

2. What do you put between the pumpkins and the ground so it's not touching the ground?

My garden partner suggested buying straw, but I read about miscellaneous stray seeds possibly being in the hay or straw (admittedly I don't know the difference between hay or straw), and really don't want random plants brought in with whatever mulch we use.

Thanks!

[PinkPetalPolygon]

Just wanted to add,

The actual spot where the plant is (and the general garden itself) is mulched already,

We have an area set up for the pumpkins and gourds to grow like 20 feet into and if all goes well, where they will put their fruit, and that area is what I was asking about.

It used to have grass we could cut to make mulch but now it is cattail weeds that stick to you.

[rainbowgardener]

If it is well mulched, you may not need anything else. Straw doesn't have weed seeds; hay does. Other things people have used include plastic, styrofoam, foam meat trays inverted, flowerpots inverted, pile of sand, pavers, insulating board, ceramic tiles, piece of wood,

I have these things:



that I put under my flower pots to keep them from messing up the wooden deck so much. I think they cost about $4 each. If you don't have a whole lot of pumpkins, might be worth doing.

[jal_ut]

Let the pumpkin vines lay on the ground. They will send down more roots at the leaf nodes. You can put a piece of cardboard under the pumpkin fruit to keep the worms and bugs from chewing holes in the bottom. Also you may want to set the fruit up on the blossom end so they form nice and round.

[Lindsaylew82]

We used paper plates. The waxed kind. We used just the paper cheapo kind first, and those wee beasties still managed to burrow through the paper into our melons... jerks....

We don't put anything under the vines, just the fruits.

[imafan26]

I trellis the small kabocha pumpkins the larger gourds climb on a fence or on the overhead trellis. If I find the pumpkins on the ground in a low spot I just prop the smaller pumpkin up on a pot just to lift it off the ground.

[Gary350]

Dryed cow piles might work good. When I was a kid grandpa drove the pickup truck and us kids picked up dry cow piles by the 100s. They are light weight you can throw them like a freebie for 200 feet. We threw the cow pies all over the garden. Put them under melons and other things to keep the melons off the wet soil. Us kids use to play cow pie freebie war in the cow pasture everyone ended up getting hit by cow pies that were not completely dry and Grandma made us take our clothes off outside after taking a dip in the pond. Those were the good old days.

[TheWaterbug]

We used paper plates. The waxed kind. We used just the paper cheapo kind first, and those wee beasties still managed to burrow through the paper into our melons... jerks....

Yup. This pumpkin from 2011 looked fine from the top:



until I turned it over :



A gopher had eaten a perfectly round hole in it, gone inside, eaten all the seeds, and set up a man-cave with a wide screen TV and a fridge full of beer.

[Lindsaylew82]

A gopher had eaten a perfectly round hole in it, gone inside, eaten all the seeds, and set up a man-cave with a wide screen TV and a fridge full of beer.

Please excuse my inappropriate snorting laughter at your misfortune, but I seriously LOL'd so suddenly that it scared the cat off the bed.

[applestar]

+1

[applestar]

Sorry reacting to what lindsay said -- I had that happen with a watermelon, too. One inch hole at the bottom and when I peered in, every bit of sweet colored flesh was scraped down to the white rind.