“I’d like to coin a new term: Cucurbitacean. A person who regards pumpkins and squashes with deep, often rapturous love.” Amy Goldman (Rebecca Rupp, 2011)
Like those other gifts of the New World, tomato and pepper, pumpkins are tropical denizens. So the giant or mammoth pumpkin, Cucurbita maxima, demands it warm if not downright hot – 20ºC plus air and soil temperatures – and 90 to 120 frost-free days to achieve its gigantic glory.
Its bed as befits a behemoth may have been prepared eight or ten weeks ago, a large hole filled with compost. Now still more compost is added prior to planting, mixed with generous amounts of granulated bone and blood fertilizer.
Install three plants per mound and allow a single stem from each to trail off in separate directions. Keep the compost moist but not soggy, using liquid fertilizer at weekly intervals – Wilson’s ‘Muskie’ is an excellent choice and, for those concerned with such things, a natural source of nutrients.
If you thought of vacationing this summer, forget it. Fanatics raising monsters that approach 2,000-pounds may spend half the daylight hours tending a patch of maybe a dozen plants. This may not be for you but daily attention will be required.
The first flowers to appear are male. After a week or two the first females appear, distinguished by a swelling at the base of the bloom. When the female flower shrivels and drops, leaving a miniature pumpkin behind, remove every other flower, male and female except one per vine.
A hoary old gardening myth claims that various members of the cucurbit clan will happily cross-pollinate with each other. The result of this sexual productivity, it is claimed, will be misshapen progeny come harvest time. While such casual hybridization certainly can and does take place, creating a taxonomists’ nightmare, nothing peculiar will result unless you save the seed to plant the following season.
Pumpkins develop at an astonishing rate – 50-pounds a day amongst prizewinners is far from unknown. Since most of that is water, adequate irrigation becomes vital. As wet pumpkin foliage – and that of other cucubits – is sensitive to mildew, water to avoid splashing, particularly early and especially late in the day. Many enthusiasts choose drip irrigation as the solution. This also relieves the strain of lugging can after can of heavy water to the thirsty brutes.
Pumpkin enthusiasts or cucurbitaceans will also be adding mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria Azospirillum to the soil. This practice has previously been popular among arborists keen on assisting their trees by both encouraging natural nutrient production while building their charges’ resistant to disease and stress. Today, the addition of soil organisms is spreading into commercial and home gardening and not only for giant pumpkins.
Thanks to all this tender loving care, as the end of summer approaches you should have one or more pumpkins that Cinderella would have been proud to ride in. What you do as a grand finale we will save until September. Meanwhile, you might wish to visit www.BigPumpkin.com.
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
