Friday 27 August 2010

Pumpkins

Last year only one of our pumpkins grew and even then it was small and never turned orange. Now I don't want to jinx it but this year our pumpkins are doing great. They are in fact taking over the garden. They are creeping onto the pathways, smothering some of our other squash and I even found one hiding in the strawberry patch.

How brilliant it will be if we can carve home grown pumpkins this halloween.I want to do everything I can to nurture these plants so any advice you can send our way will be gratefully received. Should we be feeding them? Should we put straw underneath them or should we try to lift them off the ground somehow? We had planted them up against the fence so they could climb but then never got around to tying them up.


Garden Girl and Garden Boy are already talking about face designs for their pumpkins. I don't want to disappoint them with small green things!

5 comments:

  1. Oh fingers crossed you will huge pumpkins with scary faces for halloween. We are growing Crown Prince and Jack o Lantern. Sadly only 3 fruits in total. I hope, we can have at least one for halloween. x

    ReplyDelete
  2. hopefully it grows huge, enough to carve for Halloween... ~bangchik

    ReplyDelete
  3. how magical, I would pop straw under them to protect them from the mud a bit.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great! What variety are they? I haven't seen dark green like that...

    They grow really fast- I once found that over several days at peak season a vine consistently grew about 10cm/day!

    I think competitive pumpkin growers put straw underneath...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for all the advice - straw will be going down tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete