Taking a Shot at Sowing Pumpkins
How difficult is it to grow pumpkins? My brother did it one year with a slingshot.
Still in the larval stage, my brother had a relationship with his slingshot that paralleled the one Arthur had with Excalibur, because it’s a tough gig being 9. When you’re 9 years old, you come to realize that the only control you can exercise over your own destiny involves getting your hands on items adults don’t want you to have.
Adults are horrified when their child asks for a BB gun for Christmas, but they’d go into a coma if they realized the kid was soft-pedaling it for their benefit: What he really wants is a short-range tactical missile.
My brother is smart, though, and no doubt used a bit of overkill psychology the year he got his weapon. He undoubtedly had a slingshot in mind, but probably asked for a large field artillery piece and 100 yards of concertina wire and promised not to play with them in the house. He got the slingshot.
He quickly ran out of ready ammunition--every pebble in the neighborhood disappeared--and the whizzing noises stopped for a while, until he scooped out a pumpkin for Halloween. When the seeds dried, he found they made fine short-range slingshot ammo. So for about three days, he sat happily on the back porch and whipped pumpkin seeds at the cinder-block wall.
By next fall, the yard was engulfed in creeping vines and immense orange squash.
Yes, the pumpkin is no fragile hothouse plant. Still, you might not get the same results using my brother’s technique, so here’s how to grow the kinds of gigantic pumpkins that show up every year in thousands of newspaper photos (usually with small children straining to pick them up).
It’s nice, I think, to know that a pumpkin is not just a pumpkin; there are several varieties, three of which grow to 30 or 40 inches across. These are called “Big Tom” (or “Connecticut Field”), “Jack O’Lantern” and “Big Max.”
If the slingshot method of planting is a bit too violent for your taste, plant the seeds instead in mid-May or early June, by hand, in a sunny location. Even though the pumpkin is a winter squash, it loves bright sunlight. Allow a vine area of 8 to 12 feet in diameter. Cultivate the soil and then dig a hole four inches deep right where you will plant the seeds. Put some fertilizer in the hole and then cover it with enough soil to make the ground level again.
Plant six to eight seeds an inch deep within a circle six inches wide and water them. Then go away and think thoughts of Halloween.
Just about the time you’ve forgotten that you planted pumpkins, greenery will start to appear. When the plants are 4 to 6 inches high, remove all but the two best-looking ones in your original planted circle, and water those two when you see the slightest sign of wilting, but try not to wet the foliage itself.
When the pumpkins begin to sprout and become about the size of tennis balls, you get to play Charles Darwin again. Remove all but about three or four on each vine if you want large pumpkins. If you want a single, truly immense one, remove all but one of them. It’s best to take away the small pumpkins toward the end of the vine and leave the ones nearest the main stem.
When the pumpkin(s) start to gain real heft in late summer, slide a wooden board under each of them to protect them from wet soil. The final product will look better. And, with luck, it’ll be huge.
Not that you absolutely must grow them big. There are two varieties with fairly silly names that grow to a full three inches across and are used for garlands and decorations. They’re called “Sweetie Pie” and “Jack Be Little.” In the medium-sized range are the “Small Sugar” and “Sugar” varieties.
And, if you want to grow a pumpkin more for its edible seeds than for its appeal as a Halloween icon, try the “Trick or Treat” variety. Its seeds have no hulls and can be roasted, salted and eaten. They’re often seen in nut mixes as pepitas.
Even if you decide to go with, say, the “Big Max,” don’t expect to blow away the competition at pumpkin festivals within a single year. The people who love pumpkins above all else and dedicate their lives to growing them to the size of Monaco obtain their winning seeds from previous winners, not unlike racehorse studs. Besides, do you really want to grow pumpkins in your back yard that you can’t lift? Consider: The winner at this year’s competition at Half Moon Bay nearly crushed the scales at more than 600 pounds and was brought in on a forklift.
And you can bet the guy who grew it didn’t plant it with something fun, like a slingshot. He probably seeded his yard with an elephant gun.
No, I say that if you have to carve it with a chain saw and scoop it out with a backhoe, the pumpkin’s too big. An ax and a good garden shovel should be enough.
