Pumpkin Facts
If you grow pumpkins, it will be more or less follow the same guidelines for the pumpkin would do.
The oldest evidence of growing pumpkins goes back to about 7000 BC in Mexico.
Farmers in the United States is currently growing pumpkins about 1500000000 pounds a year, many gardeners to add more.
One of the most popular customs of Halloween pumpkins for the "holiday", when the majority of the population in their goofy faces sculptsPumpkins and candles in them. If you really want to know why Google.
If the plant Pumpkins
You need more than 80-120 frost free days in which to grow pumpkins, so mature.
You can begin to grow your pumpkins inside about 4 weeks before last frost days. The soil should be about 60 degrees to 65 degrees F to 2 inches deep.
If you use floating row covers, pumpkins in your garden, you can transplant a couple of weeks before the expected last frost.
If youwho live in hot areas of your pumpkin seeds after the danger of frost is past can plant, usually at the end of March or mid April.
You want your plan pumpkins ripen in late summer or early fall. The larger the pumpkin, taking several days to mature.
Where to plant gourds
Pumpkins require a minimum of 6 hours of full sun daily.
Pumpkins growing need for garden soil that drains well and has a lot of organic material mixedin it.
Your soil should ideally have a balance of pH in the range between 5.8 and 7.5, right in the middle, the best pH value.
Your soil needs sufficient amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, many of which were with the liberal application of compost and / or composted manure, bone meal, blood meal and the like.
Land preparation equipment Pumpkins
Pumpkins need a lot of nutrients in the soil, which can be powered mainly by compost andcomposted manure.
The best way to put the compost is applied where your hills are several inches of compost and mix in the area about 2 m in diameter about a foot deep.
If you are rototilling lines, add 2 to 4 inches of compost, composted manure, etc., and rototiller on it about 8 inches deep.
You can also mound the soil in which you will help your plants in the mix in compost or other organic substances.
Other products are added to the medium can be, lucerne meal earlynitrogen in the season and later in the meal, feather meal, ground oyster shells or eggs season of calcium, potassium green sand and seaweed meal for trace elements.
Choosing the right variety of seeds for your region
If you have a small garden, you should note that pumpkin vines can take up to 100 square feet.
Pumpkins, at least in most species are too heavy to row, but grow well in large garden areas.
Contact the county extension office to see if thereare common diseases in pumpkins in your neighborhood. If so, get suggestions for the seeds that are resistant to these diseases.
Disease, the infested pumpkins were discussed in detail in the second half of this contribution.
Seeds and germination
Pumpkin seeds are usually still plantable six years after they bought them from a seed, reliable suppliers.
Pumpkin seeds are not in soil temperature below 60 ° C to 105 ° C. The optimum temperature for germination germinationbetween 86 ° C to 95 ° C.
Seedlings should emerge in about 5 days at the optimum temperature range, if they grow in full sun or under lights (fluorescent tubes are OK) are.
If you sow directly to the floors, you can warm up with a black plastic mulch on the ground. Getting the soil with plastic (to make sure that all edges are covered with dirt), and cut holes for seeds.
The soil temperature should not be sprouting garden, not less than 60 ° C to 65 ° C your pumpkinSeeds.
Pumpkin house plants
Plant your pumpkin seeds in peat pots or soil blocks 3 or 4 weeks before last frost. You can use conical plastic cups as well, but pots of peat and / or blocks of land are better ways.
Use a good potting mix or mix of start-up to start your pumpkin seeds are readily available in the mixes at your local garden center.
If you mix your own potting soil to create, you can mix the clay soil, sphagnum peat, perlite, and the purchaseYour local garden shop. The addition of compost to the mix creates an ideal mix of start-up.
Do not use garden soil as many weed seeds, fungal spores and the errors that are not optimal for the start of your pumpkins have inside.
If you want to grow a pumpkin plant in containers or more, you must get at least a 10-liter pot.
9 liters of soil mix, mix a few cups of flour, alfalfa meal, feather meal half cup, half cup of powdered eggshell or oyster shell calcium,half a cup of green sand for potassium, and a few tablespoons of seaweed to cover the trace elements.
. Dilute plant three or four seeds about 1 "deep Only plants have at least two true leaves, leave the 2 best maps and about 10 cm high, choose the best accommodations and the other clip with scissors.
Pumpkins transplant in your garden
Before transplanting your real pumpkins in your garden, you need to "strengthen" your plants.
For hardeningYour pumpkin seedlings, they move to the outside during the day and reduce watering.
Your plants should be 2 or more leaves at this stage, and is already 3 or 4 weeks since it was originally planted them.
As pumpkins prefer warm temperatures, ideally the day temps between 75 ° and 85 ° C daytime and 60 degrees to 65 degrees F night temperatures.
However, if you're so far north as we live, you can not answer these temperatures up to 2-4 weeks after transplantation, so thatmay want to use row covers and black plastic ground cover to help your pumpkins to make a good start.
You need a minimum temperature of 60 ° F to soil your plant squash, so plant them in an area that gets lots of sun.
If planted in rows, space rows 4-6 feet apart and the plants 2 to 3 meters in rows. If you have a wider selection of pumpkin, you might want to plant them in rows 3-4 feet away.
If your plant pumpkin seedlings, dig aHole that is big enough snaps peat pots, floor pad or mass of soil, then pack the soil around the plant.
Make sure the soil is moist but not wet, you should be able to grab a dense clump of dirt with your hand or is too wet.
Plastic mulch, a couple of weeks before the transplant date is set to be a significant help (how much depends on the help of an asset from one part of the type of plastic mulch is used - the traditional black is the least useful).
Pumpkin PlantingSeeds directly in your garden
Once the soil temps have stabilized above 60 ° C, you can plant pumpkin seeds in your garden. You must make sure that you are in danger of frost.
If topping up your field of pumpkins, put on your foot hills at a distance of 4-8 and 4-6 seeds about an inch deep and about 1 inch apart in a circle or a square configuration.
If you sow in rows, the rows should be 4-8 feet apart, and the seeds should be planted 6-12 inchesseparately.
Once the seeds have germinated, you can thin your plants to once every 18-36 inches, depending on whether larger or smaller pumpkin varieties, and can manage your garden soil.
Your best Pumpkins
Once your plants at least two true leaves, thin them apart have 2 or 3 plants per hill or 18-36 cm, when they are in a row.
Pumpkins have male and female flowers. The male flowers first appeared 40 to 50 days after germination. A weekfemale flowers begin to emerge later.
If you have a lot of insects, pollination should not be a problem.
If you have too few insects, you will begin to fall, the female flowers. To avoid this, you can rest your hand with a cotton swab or small brush to take the pollen from the male flowers and give them to pollinate the female flowers.
At the beginning of the season, make sure that the pumpkin plant are not covered in weeds.
Pull weeds by hand within six inches of cucurbits,the surface hoe weeds, which are more distant, rototiller and weeds over a foot out of your squash plants.
Once the vines have covered the ground, you will not need too much grass in the pumpkin patch the rest of the season.
It 'a good practice, about half of the season, side dress your plants pumpkin (about 6 inches from the base of the plant) with flour compost compost, manure or alfalfa.
Pruning the plants with small pumpkins to help othersTo get big pumpkins.
There is also a good idea if drills pumpkin in your area to hilly dirt around the base of the plants, they need to prevent them from laying eggs.
Jenny's Tip - If you ever smaller pumpkins (about the size of a volleyball or less), you can grow pumpkins and trellis, you can use panty hose or the like, make a sling to keep it upright.
Mulching and weeding
Early in the season can be made of black plastic mulch best option, as the heat 'Soil and suppresses weeds.
Grass or straw to help spread the pumpkin plants, both throttle pesky weeds and conserve soil moisture.
You do not want to apply to this type of mulch to the soil to about 75 degrees F as mulch tends to keep the soil cool.
One of the greatest assets of mulching is that, because the pumpkins have shallow root systems, weed does not bother them too much.
Irrigation Pumpkins
When growing pumpkins, depending on theClimate, should be watered 1 to 2 inches on a weekly basis.
If you mulch, you can water a little 'less, but check your soil moisture frequently during hot, dry periods.
If the water once a week, especially if you've mulched, should be fine.
Enough water to get about 6 to 8 inches into the ground. Irrigation light of pumpkins is virtually useless.
If your soil is sandy, it uses less water but the water a couple of timesWeek.
If your pumpkin is back, you may need a little 'more than if the plants spread over the ground water worlds.
As with most vegetables, drip irrigation or soaker hoses are the preferred method of irrigation. However, if only in a sprinkler head, water early in the morning, so as to reduce the risk of mold and mildew.
Companion planting and rotation considerations
A good companion for growing pumpkins are:
Beans, the complement to your garden with nitrogenit absorbs from the air.
Pumpkins to help keep the roots of corn moisture.
Radishes have a reputation to protect your pumpkins, squash drills.
Mint is said to control ants, aphids, flea beetles, rodents and help.
Onions repel fruit tree drills, awls, aphids, rust flies, moles, and some root nematodes.
Marigolds and nasturtiums repel insects and beetles away from your pumpkins. They also attract bees to pollinate your flowers of pumpkin.
Oregano is alsosaid to keep squash benefit to many parasites.
Companions bad for squash, potatoes. Inhibit the growth of potato plants in the squash.
Not necessarily need to turn pumpkins every year if you have problems with dry rape, Fusarium or viruses of the mosaic red.
When Harvest Pumpkins
Like most winter squash, pumpkins are ready to harvest when the skin is hard and can not be pierced with a nail.
We usually wait until the first"Killing Frost" to pick our pumpkins. At this time the skins are usually a dark orange and the stems have hardened.
I always use a scissors to cut the pumpkin comes from the vine, so that about 3 cm of the stem. This helps protect the pumpkins decomposition and provides a handle to collect it.
This is a practice essay, a kind of cloth or leather gloves when handling dry stalks that put pumpkins can be quite abrasive.
Treat your pumpkins picked.Bruises or injuries to the skin affect the shelf life of pumpkins.
Save and / or maintenance of Pumpkins
Pumpkins store well through the winter. We have pumpkins and more often in June, when he carefully picked.
A place in a dark basement garages, crawl space under your house or a basement is usually the ideal places for storing pumpkin.
If a pumpkin has been injured or cut during harvest or when they move into the storage area, use this as a firstwill rot quickly in storage.
You can cut out the red spots and bake, steam or otherwise cook pumpkins, without any negative impact on the taste and nutritional value of the remaining shares.
You can steam frozen squash and zucchini, if you do not have a place for storage.
Warning: may be difficult enough to warm the pumpkin all the bacteria, to recommend that if you get a canned puree kill, can, at best, the cube and can of pumpkin in a smallSea salt and water.
We experimented with pumpkins and held in the warmer areas of our house at 65 ° to 70 ° C throughout the winter squash and plenty to eat throughout the winter.
Prevention and natural solutions to common pests
Cucumber beetle is a striped beetle is about 3 / 16 "long, greenish-yellow with three black stripes, ran after him.
Spotted cucumber beetle is about the same, but with a dozen points on the back.
Regardlessbeetles than they seem, are parasites that eat bad enough plants and bacteria to spread or raping your plants wilt.
To prevent these beetles from having to know your plants, you can use includes the lines before flowering, to keep them away from your plants pumpkin.
If the problems are too serious, can be treated with rotenone or pyrethrin organic organic with these animals.
Another nasty pest is the drill screw squash. Usually occur around the time ofVines begin to spread in your garden. Fortunately, there is no need to attack pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon and melon (cantaloupe).
Squash drills lives are an inch or so long, quite often, and are white with a brown head.
They are the larvae of a small moth with brown forewings and hind wings of light and a red belly. The butterflies lay their eggs in late spring or early summer near the base of your pumpkin vines.
The tips are about a week later and a hole inTo get your wine in them. You will see a small hole below the hole and green excrement. And you can see, the vine will die suddenly.
To prevent squash vine drill decimate your plants first to see the moths (and listen ... have a buzz when they fly, which is unusual for moths).
You can also yellow bowls of water to trap the moths, are attracted to the color, so will fly in the bowl and drown.
At this point it's a good idea to useRange includes about 2 weeks to disappear, the butterflies again. Be sure to cover the edges of the line covered in dirt to seal the moths.
If you start the flowering plants at this time you can hand-pollinate your pumpkins, if necessary. Do not use insecticides, as it can also kill beneficial insects that pollinate the plants too.
If you find the drill a hole before the plant wilts and dies set, you can sometimes cautious a hole in the screw and remove the drill.Cover the hole with soil and wine, most of the time it will send roots into the soil from the cutting area.
If you have a wine that have been killed by a drill to find the cut, and destroy lives.
Aphids are common pests that can lower the sides of your pumpkin leaves are. You know you're there when you see yellow leaves and crackling or curling.
Aphids suck the sap from the leaves of the plants and leave behind a sticky substance. The only beneficiaries of thisAnts process to collect the sticky sweet stuff.
The best solution for ladybugs, aphids to import your garden. They feed on aphids and are very effective in ridding the plants of these little green bugs.
Another solution is to "wash" with a hose and nozzle or a high-pressure organic insecticidal soap.
Squash bugs are probably the most common parasites, but are slightly easier to control drill. They suck the juice from the leaves of pumpkinso that first identified and then the leaves will wither and die.
Squash bug control is easier if the land has many nutrients your plants are healthy.
Get rid of anything around your garden, like the old cards or anything that you can hide in the winter.
It also helps transform, or rototiller in your garden in the fall to eliminate these types of errors, such as hide
To get rid of bugs, manual harvesting usually works in a garden, because it is not so greattake more than one or two hours a week in summer for a few weeks.
If you get this error and nymphs, have a bucket of soapy water to make them fall into ... The soap breaks the capillary action of water, so the error immediately sink and drown in water.
If you find eggs on the underside of the leaves and stems, simply crush the eggs.
A tip or two in the pumpkin patch during the night ... The error will gather under the boards in the night. In the morning, lift the edge andCollection of insects and drop in the bucket of soapy water.
Rotenone and pyrethrins as organic compounds are also effective if you have a heavy infestation of these parasites.
Environmental factors
To develop flower-end rot causes a black rot fruit at the end of the pumpkin. Heat / lack of water, and a calcium deficiency are the main cause of corruption. You can then ensure that your plants of water and possibly prevent, add lime to the soil beforeIrrigation.
Downy mildew is a foliar disease and is caused by a fungus with a long Latin names. If you really want to know the name, let me know and I copy it and paste it into a response.
This mold is not usually a problem unless you have a cold spell in 45 ° to 55 ° F range for a month or more.
Powdery mildew appears first as yellow spots on plant leaves, squash, and then to brown or beige in downy gray or white. Then, black spots andthe leaves wither and the plants and sometimes even die.
To avoid mold, growing variety of pumpkin that are resistant to them.
Also, leave a space between plants so you do not stay wet for too long.
And if the conditions seem favorable for the disease to appear (ie a long cold and rainy), spray the sheets with a compost tea. About tea, put into a compost bucket and fill it with water, and when he's down, fill the syringe with water and sprinkle brownPlant leaves with him.
Powdery mildew is another mold that can affect your plants pumpkin, but a very different look. It is whitish and dusty on the leaves and stems and grows squash.
And 'caused by moisture, heat and humidity, but rather cool and rainy.
When the leaves are infected, they usually die. If the infection is severe, can kill the entire plant.
If you are able to avoid the irrigation head. Otherwise, water early in the morning so that theThe plants can dry out by noon or so.
If you keep pests under control and spray the leaves with thy vineyard, and a compost-tea-soda solution or a solution, you probably do not have a problem with this disease.
Other solutions are organic sulfur compounds, or spray a weak solution of milk and water (9:1).
If you placed this mold, to destroy the vineyard, at the end of the season and turn your pumpkin into a new area next season gardening.
You can also seedsVarieties that are resistant to fungi such as mildew and dust are.
Another fungus with long Latin names led to a plague called "black rot". Black rot is found mainly in warmer climates and more humid as the U.S. Southeast, but can also occur in pumpkin and squash in colder climates.
Red and black rubber is a plague that attacks the stems and leaves of squash plants. It is usually caused by too much moisture.
Black rot on dry plant will surviveMatter or soil. They will live there for over a year.
It lives on dry plant material or soil, where it can survive for more than a year. And 'need to rotate crops of pumpkin in a new area, if your shot hits the crop.
To avoid the black red, irrigation was able to reduce free moisture on leaf surfaces, and at least a two-year rotation cycle is a must.
Even in this case irrigation should be avoided in the lead, but when you do not have the water chosen in the early stages ofDay.
It can also be an organic fungicide spray with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). In a liter of water, add a few drops of organic olive oil, few drops of green liquid soap, and 3 tablespoons of baking soda. Spray on the squash court, in order to effectively control all of the above fungi.
Fusarium fruit rot is a soil fungus to infect your pumpkin can be cut.
You can see this problem in a slightly sunken purple margins. Awhite fungus often develop at the center of the lesions. It can be deployed with a watering can.
Crop rotation and planting of resistant varieties is the best defense against Fusarium fruit rot.
Straw mulch can help prevent rotting fruit right through the pumpkins in contact with the ground.
Do not store pumpkins, which described the symptoms as they will rot quickly in storage.
Angular leaf spot is a bacterial infection, the points that have a heat output to water, createsand be guided by the leaf veins, giving them a square appearance.
Warm humid climate is a promoter of this infection, and if it dries, the holes created by this disease can be overcome.
Prevention of ALS begins with clean seed and resistant varieties. Do not crowd your plants like humidity creates conditions in which the disease.
If you have only stamping on the head, please do so in the morning. She spoke to spray your plants with fungicides, if done at homeSymptoms.
Just when you thought it was safe to grow pumpkins, then comes the mosaic virus.
Mosaic is usually spread by aphids. Develop their pumpkins leaves irregular both in shape and size, and fruit may have the same symptoms.
Prevent aphids infect the plants with row covers, the best option. Diatomaceous earth works well, but only if it is in powder form (not wet).
You might think that this time we would otherwise nothing, absolutelyanything else that might affect your pumpkin crop, but unfortunately we must speak bacterial wilt.
Bacterial wilt is due to your cucumber beetles if they are, if your pumpkin seedlings emerge, they can infect the plants early.
Bacterial appears when the leaves begin to wilt in the umbrella-shaped appearance, then the entire plant collapses and dies.
As you can imagine, is the control of cucumber beetle control bacterial wilt, so if your growingYour pumpkins are organic line includes the most effective prevention early in the season.
Most fungal infections by planting resistant varieties, crop rotation, and are controlled with a spray over homemade.
Everything else can usually includes checking the error with the line, diatomaceous earth and pyrethrin are treated when they get serious.
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