Pumpkins

pumpkin

My 6 year old daughter was adamant she wanted a pumpkin crop for Halloween! They are also great to use in recipes as they are a sweet vegetable and are often used in sweet recipes as well as savoury.

Pumpkin seeds should be planted in April or May if you want them to be ready in October. They are easy seeds to plant as they are quite large, so they are easy to plant individually.

My Pumpkin Diary

13th April 2013 – Day 1- It was easy to plant one seed in each section of the tray, about 3 cm deep in moist compost. I labelled the tray with a potting stick, of course and put them on the conservatory window sill. I will put water in the tray every couple of days, so I do not saturate them.Pumpkins 22nd April

21st April 2013 – Day 8 – Really pleased, they have sprouted well. My husband, at this point, decided to look up how many pumpkins could be on each vine. Apparently six is an average number. I may be giving away many to friends!!!!! They also might take up a lot of space, so we will see how they get on.

27th April 2013 – Day 14 - Oh my goodness, they already need27.4.13 (4) planting into bigger pots! You can see in the picture that the roots have alreay wound themselves down to the bottom of the small pots. I can see I may not have enough garden! Anyway, they are strong enought to be put into bigger pots for a couple of weeks before planting out.27.4.13 (5)

Out of the 12 seeds planted, 9 have sprouted, so I have put the pots in a larger tray for watering and on a shelf in my greenhouse frame. Can’t wait to see these get bigger.

6th May 2013 – Day 23 - Time to plant out. They are large and strong and the roots, oncePumpkins again, have spread throughout the pot. now, having a smaller garden than I would wish for, I can not plant all of the seedlings out and they are supposed to be planted 2-3 feet apart. I have had to go for about 1 and 1/2  feet apart, so I can plant 8 of them. The last one, I shall try growing in a large pot and my daughter can look after that one.

16th June 2013 – Day 64 - Unfortunately, I have had a few casualties!! :(   All the plantsPumpkins. 16.6.13 have been struggling and three have withered and died. We had some rain and I have watered them in between. Not enough!!!! I decided I had nothing to lose by giving them even more water and they started to pick up. WARNING – Pumpkins need an awful lot of water to grow!!!!!!!! Strangely enough, I had one left over that I put in a pot on the patio. This one has thrived as you can see, maybe because  it had all the pot’s water to itself. I have uprooted the others out of the veg garden and planted the ones that have survived in large plastic pots, so let’s see if they do the same.

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