Growing Pumpkins

Good day my gardening chums and happy Malaysia day!

I thought i would continue my advice on growing fruit and vegetables by giving some hints and tips on growing pumpkins, very easy to grow but they do take up some room with the long runners.

Here are some tips to follow when growing pumpkins in your garden.

1
Choose a type of pumpkin to plant that is designed for what you want the pumpkin for. You can also choose from a variety of sizes, colors, and shapes with pumpkin seeds. You can also grow pumpkins of different sizes or a single size. Once you have made the decisions about what type of pumpkin you want to grow you will need to start the seeds off that you can get from inside the pumpkin fruit.

2
When planting pumpkins make sure you choose an area that gets plenty of sunlight. You want to have the area receive at least eight hours of sunlight a day, ten hours a day is even better. If the pumpkins are grown in the shade, they will refuse to fruit, which means you will not have any pumpkins to harvest. If they do manage to produce, pumpkins that are raised in the shade are small, distorted, and off colour.

3
After you have planted, the pumpkin seeds to be sure that they get the best growth possible they should be watered on a daily basis. When it comes to watering you want to make sure that you don't over water the pumpkins, in other words you don't want the ground to be soggy as this can cause your pumpkins to rot. They should also be fertilized regularly with a quality vegetable fertilizer or with some chicken manure, the small coloured balls of fertiliser for fruiting plants are best and follow the amount required on the label.


4
Once your pumpkins have begun to sprout, you are going to need to prune back your plants. When planting the seeds you will end up with more plants sprouting than what you need. On average, what you need to do is begin pulling some of the extra plants when they are about three inches in height. You want to have only three plants for every three feet. When spacing your plants you also want to think about how wide pumpkin plants grow. Rows should be about three feet apart, or if you have an overhang for pumpkins to grow over on that would work out well.

I hope you find some of these hints and tips handy, enjoy your pumpkins!