When to Plant Pumpkin Seeds
The best time for planting pumpkin seeds is early summer so they’ll be ripe by October. Pumpkins take 90 to 120 days to mature after seeds are planted, depending on the variety.
How To Pick a Pumpkin Variety:
If
you’re growing pumpkins for pies or muffins, choose a variety that grows small,
one- to six- pound pumpkins. They have dense, sweet flesh with a mild flavor.
Try varieties like ‘Early Sweet Sugar,’ ‘Baby Bear,’ ‘Small Sugar,’ or
‘Spookie.’ If you want to make pumpkin
soup, try planting ‘Cinderella,’ a French heirloom that grows to 20 pounds and
gets its name from its resemblance to the pumpkin that becomes a carriage in
that famous fairytale. If you’re growing pumpkins to carve into
jack-o’-lanterns, look for varieties that grow large, like ‘Connecticut Field,’
'Autumn Gold,’ ‘Big Max’ or ‘Dill’s Atlantic Giant.’
How to Plant Pumpkin Seeds
Pick a planting site with full sun to light shade. Make sure you have plenty of room in your garden. Pumpkin vines grow 20 to 30 feet long, so they will not fit in a small space.
Sow seeds directly into the garden soil. Pumpkin seeds do best when planted where they’ll grow instead of transplanting them. Rake the garden soil into small mounds and plant three to five pumpkin seeds in each mound, about one inch deep. Leave two to five feet between each mound. The bigger the pumpkins you’re growing, the more space you need to leave between mounds.
Planting pumpkin seeds near the edge of your garden allows the vines to grow into the yard and not engulf your other vegetables.
Tips for Growing Pumpkins
Fertilize pumpkin vines when plants are about a foot tall. Use a nitrogen-based fertilizer to feed them every other week because they’re heavy feeders.
Water daily in the morning. Use a soaker hose to give your pumpkins a daily, deep drink under the leaves, at the roots. Pumpkins need a lot of water, especially in the heat of summer. Don’t wet the leaves of the vine or you could cause the plant to get a fungal disease. So avoid overhead watering.
As pumpkins start to form, lift them off the soil to lessen the chance of their rotting. Slip a piece of cardboard or folded newspaper underneath to prevent contact with damp soil.
Prune the vines after a few pumpkins have formed so the plant’s energy goes towards producing blooms and feeding the baby pumpkins.
Look out for problems like squash bugs, bacterial wilt disease that’s spread by striped cucumber beetles and causes vines to die, and powdery mildew fungus. Treat adult beetles with neem or pyrethrum. Treat powdery mildew on the leaves with a fungicide spray.
How to Harvest Pumpkins
Later in the season, remove any leaves shading the pumpkins. This helps the sun turn the pumpkins a brighter color. As the pumpkins ripen, the vines yellow and shrivel up.
Pumpkins are ripe when the outside is brightly colored, the rind is hard, and the stem begins to shrivel and dry.
To harvest, cut pumpkin stems off the vine with a sharp knife. Be sure to leave at least two inches of stem on the fruit so you can store it. If you break off the stem, the pumpkin won’t last as long.
After cutting the stem, place the pumpkin in the sun for 10 to 14 days to let it harden off and finish ripening. Store your pumpkins in a cool dark place until you’re ready to turn it into a jack-o’-lantern or a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.
FAQs
How do I save pumpkin seeds for planting?
If you want to save seeds from a fresh pumpkin to plant, clean off all the pulp. Rinse off the seeds then air dry them on a paper towel. Plant when they’re dry or store them in a paper envelope until you’re ready to plant them.
How long does it take to grow a pumpkin from seed?
Depending on the variety, it takes 90 to 120 days once seeds are planted for a pumpkin to develop and fully ripen. Check the “days to maturity” information on the seed packet.
When do you plant pumpkin seeds?
How many pumpkins grow on one plant?
You’ll get three to five pumpkins from a standard and large-sized pumpkin plant. Smaller varieties, like sugar pumpkins, grow up to 10 pumpkins per vine.