Pumpkin growing help, please

Factual Questions
1

I thought I’d seek advice before it’s planting season…

Every year we plant pumpkins. We’ve tried several different breeds of pumpkins and rarely reuse seeds from one year to the next. And every year without fail, the same thing happens - we get great vines and several flowers. But the flowers are almost invariably male. Male flowers don’t become pumpkins, so we don’t get any fruit for our effort. We’ve had dozens of male flowers come up, and maybe four or five female flowers come up over the past seven or eight growing seasons - and the rare female plants that have come up did so late into the season, so the pumpkins were only golf-ball size by Halloween. It’s very disappointing for this to happen year after year.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on? I assume it has something to do with the soil being much more favorable to male plants. If so, is there anything we can do to prep the soil to change it? Or maybe I’m wrong all together, and someone has a different cause.

2

Sounds like pollination problems. You’ve got to help those pumpkins get it on.

3

IIR, pumpkins normally do the male flowers first and female later, on the same plant. Sounds as if yours are fairly slow growing and don’t make it through to maturity.

For faster growth, you want plenty of sun, warm soil, and water right since germination. You want good rich soil too (they usually recommend plenty rotted manure).

So plant at the beginning of the recommended season in a spot that gets full sun, and you may want to put a “blanket” or black plastic over the soil to warm it faster in the spring and jump-start the germination (and/or cheat and buy a six-pack of starts). You also might want to check the seed packets and get one with the fewest days-to-harvest listed.

Then it only remains to do the right esoteric pagan rituals!