Pumpkins

[JR]

With a pumpkin do you let it just take over the world or should you take out the growing tip? Mine wants to head for China at the moment!

[Peggy Sue]

I'm doing pumpkins for the first time this year..but I'm told you can train them in a circle (I bet I fail to do that!)

My friend grows butternut (also trying this for the first time this year) and she says they take up enormous amounts of space but she doesn't like to nip the ends since thats where the butternuts seem to grow, so I am going to supply China with pumpkins and butternut too!

[Michelle]

We grew mini-pumpkins and just trained ours as we got the most pumpkins quite far front the main stem

[MrsD'ville mkII]

I was wondering about this too, as I'd heard that you should restrict each plant to a couple of pumpkins max, but I just can't bring myself to butcher them! Pumpkin pie was magical last year, so I'll make a batch of filling and freeze it if we have more than the one precious pumpkin required for 31st Dec!

[ocailleagh]

I was wondering about this too, as I'd heard that you should restrict each plant to a couple of pumpkins max, but I just can't bring myself to butcher them! Pumpkin pie was magical last year, so I'll make a batch of filling and freeze it if we have more than the one precious pumpkin required for 31st Dec!

New Year pumpkin?

All that'll happen if you don't restrict the plant is that you'll get more pumpkins, but smaller ones. So you only really need to do it if you're going for large pumpkins!

[MrsD'ville mkII]

I have a 5 star case of preghead today, time to go to bed I think!

We have four pumpkin plants so I might let three grow as many as they like and restrict one, so we have a whopper for Bonfire Night

[Jobi1canobi]

I'm told you can train them in a circle

You can grow pumpkins vertically too - I heard of an example where someone had put an 8 foot frame up and they were growing 35lb pumpkins 7 feet in the air. Apparently, as the pumpkin grows the stems will adjust to the weight and strengthen enough to hold their own fruit.

I'm trying it for the first time this year - no problems so far.

[Michelle]

We grew our minis up the fence. If you did it with bigger ones you could support them with nets or old tights if they looked like they were putting a strain on the supporting stems. I think people do this with melons so i don;t see why it couldn't be applied to pumpkins

[theabsinthefairy]

I tend to leave mine to grow to their hearts content - and last year we had a bumper crop of 25 - 30 kilo pumpkins, about to 6 or 7 to each plant, and then 3 or 4 smaller ones perfect for roasting as they fit straight into the oven.

I grow mine on the outer edges of my veggie plot, so that I can train them to be a bit of a 'fence'. Then when the chickens are let loose on the plot they don't tend to pass through the plants or fly over them - don't know why it just works that way. I have also started to train round courgette plants to grow in circles - just though it would look nice and it does, with the beautiful yellow flowers exposed they look like fancy round flower beds ( I am of course kidding myself they just look like courgettes growing in a circle).

[Millymollymandy]

I restrict my pumpkins but only after they've produced about 2 fruit to each stem. Then I chop them off but you have to watch out for the side shoots! I've got about 15 pumpkins forming on one potimarron already!

[tessybear]

I know this might sound stupid, but will mine be ok in a grow bag in a greenhouse? I thought it might not be warm enough up here in Scotland to grow outside.

[Millymollymandy]

Unless your greenhouse is enormous then I'd say no, because they spread out so much. You need to allow about 3m in all directions around one plant!

[tessybear]

Hi
I think I had better move them outside then!! I have got my first tomatoes appeared on the plants though.
hopefully I must be doing something right.

[JR]

Ours is getting massive. 1 pumpkin is about the size of a basketball,

[Octillio]

Hi
For anyone thinking of growing a pumpkin indoors, you can, given the right conditions (large pot, plenty of room, plenty of sunshine, plenty of water - i.e. in a conservatory) successfully do so. Whilst I found polination of the fruit was initially tricky (some websites I'd visited said that you could self polinate from flowers from the same plant which I found did not work), I then grew a second, smaller pumpkin plant and used its flowers to polinate my main one and now have a pumpkin growing, which is currently the size of a large (orange!) football. You do need lots of room as the vines go everywhere, and I only have the one fruit, however, it was relatively simple to grow, needs watering daily and feeding every now and again (with a tomato plant food), and seems to thrive. (The seed itself was one from a garden centre i.e. 'Grow your own giant pumpkin'.) So if you have the space and the inclination it is possible.