my pumpkin has vined everywhere and took over my garden…so growing good(lol I’ll never plant pumpkins and watermelons in center of garden again).
My problem is my pumpkin is dieing off a little in the center…will my pumpkins still grow? pumpkins are fist sized and green.
Is my pumpkins plant ok and pumpkins will still grow and be healthy and it is because of our cool season this year?
Whatever you do, just don’t mess with it. Pumpkins don’t like being messed with. I’ve got several pumpkins in similar condition–if I leave them alone, they do fine. If I fuck with them, they die.
Pumpkins have adventitious roots that occur at each leaf node. Their usual habit is to vine out, put down these roots, and flower (and fruit) while the main trunk slowly turns brown and dies. Don’t worry. Unless your vines are spreading out across concrete or some other impermeable surface, the plant will be fine.
As long as your pumpkin patch is sincere, I am lead to believe that that is all that counts.
ROFL! In fact, you made me snort!
Thanks: )
Speaking of Pumpkins, can anyone suggest a reason why all of one’s flowers would be male? We’ve tried different kinds of pumpkins, planting them from seed, planting them in different parts of the yard, planting multi beds the same year, but for the past five years or so every damn flower has been male, so no pumpkins. We never had much luck before that, but at least there were some golfball sized pumpkins once upon a time back when we first moved here.
By the way, next year, pick an area, and prune every tendril that goes past that area. Less energy spent on vines, more on fruit.
Prune means pinch off the terminal bud on every tendril that goes beyond the limit, not hack off big long bits of vine.
Tris
Reminds me of when a childhood friend of mine tried to grow pumpkins. Maybe he started them late, or the growing season here is too short. But it was getting to be October and the biggest one he had was about the size of a baseball. One night his parents got a ginormous pumpkin and plopped it down in the middle of the vines, for him to discover the next morning.
To this day the guy insists he grew a huge pumpkin.
Here is a recent thread from 08/20/09 that could be helpful to people. That thread also links to my recipe for pumpkin pound cake. I thought this was that thread originally.