With the right steps, it's easy to achieve a successful harvest. Learn about the different giant pumpkin varieties, and how to properly care for and train your pumpkin plant. Getting started with your giant pumpkin seeds is easy as long as you follow these steps. Pumpkin plants are fast growers and heavy feeders. They will need 300-600 sq feet, ideally with some kind of fence or barrier to provide protection from the wind. A loamy soil is best, and it’s always a good idea to dig in plenty of well-rotted cow manure during the previous autumn. The ideal pH is between 6.5 and 7.2. Transplanting Pumpkins The Atlantic Giant Pumpkin is the variety I grew. It’s regularly produced monsters weighing over 600lbs. They claim it’s delicious, but I was just aiming for size Pumpkin Hundredweight Seeds It’s possible that the first one will abort, or the pollination didn’t take, so it’s a good idea to pollinate a few ‘spare’ pumpkins further up the vine. These can be removed when you’re sure the first one has taken, which is usually when it gets to about 40 inches in circumference. Remove the pumpkin by severing the main vine on two sides rather than the pumpkin stem (like a ‘T’ shape). This reduces the risk of infection causing the fruit to rot.

In the fall or early spring, clear a 10 foot by 10 foot section of your yard and till the soil down to 10 inches deep. Amend it with organically-rich garden soil from your local nursery if you need to. As these pumpkins generally take about 120 days to mature, you’ll ideally want to get a head start by seeding seeds indoors in peat pots about a month before your average last frost date.Seeds germinate at temperatures of65° to 75°F and soil temperatures of 70° to90°F.

Giant Pumpkin Varieties

Pumpkin plants will grow best in a sunny spot, but they can do with protecting from extreme weather. Itamar Ben-Dor from Green-Life advises that pumpkin growers keep an eye on the weather to prevent their precious fruits from being damaged. Sculpt the bed into a low broad mound, like a pitcher’s mound, and cover it for the winter with a straw mulch or a cover crop .

Look after the plant and keep it healthy. Continue watering and feeding until the end of the month. Once your plant has been pollinated and fruit has started to develop behind the flowers, you can begin to give a high potassium feed, such as tomato food. SanSone, Arricca (July 7, 2020). "Plant Pumpkins Now for a Fall Harvest". Country Living . Retrieved April 11, 2021.

Giant Pumpkin Seeds

Another good prospect for the giant pumpkin competition. Often produces fruits over 50 kg! How to Grow Giant Pumpkins Stake down or bury leaf nodes along the vine. These will root and help prevent wind from rolling thevines. The present day record is over 2700 pounds! Ron Wallace’s giant pumpkin seeds routinely sell on the Internet for hundreds of dollars for a single seed! Here is your chance to grow giant pumpkins with “top of the line” Wallace genetics. Wallace Whoppers are fun to grow and you will be astounded at its amazing rate of growth. Start your own neighborhood competition, or enter one of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth weigh-off’s! Now you can grow like a champion with WOW! Thirdly, keep the seeds in a warm and bright location for germination, with an optimal temperature of 20 to 24 degrees. Usually, the seeds will germinate within a week or two, but common germination issues can delay the process. Do not overwater! Pumpkins hate being cold and wet. The number one error for beginners is overwatering seeds before they germinate, which causes them to rot. Moisten the compost and don’t water it again until the surface has dried off.

Dig a hole that's 50cm diameter for planting. Fill the hole with compost or well-rotted manure, and the soil should end up slightly mounded. Set a timer on your phone or make a note in your gardening journal to water your gourd every day if you live in a dry area, or every two to five days for those in wetter locales. It’s worth taking the time to prepare the ground well, ahead of planting or sowing outdoors, to ensure your pumpkins thrive. Miller, Tracy. "Record-breaking pumpkin thought to be world's largest weighs in at 1,725 pounds". NY Daily News. Watering the pumpkins daily will help maximize their size and keep them healthy. To prevent pumpkin rot, avoid wetting the plant's leaves.Langevin, Don (2003). How-to-Grow World Class Giant Pumpkins, III. Annedawn Publishing. ISBN 0963279319. But while a pumpkin carriage might not be a realistic way to travel, Savage notes that Cinderella might have had other options.

Of all the plants I grow at my allotment, those I most look forward to growing are giant pumpkins. I can’t say they’re high up on our list of ‘most eaten’ home-grown vegetables, that honour falls to potatoes, sweetcorn, onions, swedes, leeks and runner beans. However, unlike those other veg which are pretty easy to sow and forget about, most squash and pumpkins need regular nurturing and none more so than Atlantic Giants. At the junction of secondary vines it is useful to bury the vine so that it can more easily root at those locations in addition to the main plant base. You will know when you have found such a location because a small white bump/node appears beneath. More roots also means more goodness for the giant pumpkin fruit. This technique is over 1000 years old – see my pumpkin growing translation from the Ruralia Commoda. There are other types of giant pumpkin seeds, but most competition-size pumpkins come from the Atlantic Giantvariety. If you could grow a pumpkin in outer space or under water, it’s height would no longer be a problem, Hu notes. “Ultimately all the [flattening] forces are due to [Earth’s] gravity.” Hu and his colleagues published their results in 2011 in the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics.a b c Andres, Thomas (October 26, 2010). "Origin of the Giant Pumpkin". Plant Talk. New York Botanical Garden . Retrieved April 11, 2021.