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How to Grow Pumpkins

Learning how to grow pumpkins for Halloween can be such an amazing experience. It only takes a little bit of planning and some space in your garden.

This is fantastic way to get the children involved in gardening and for the family to spend time on a project that will take a few months to reach completion.

pumpkin is grown from garden seed

Pumpkin is grown from garden seed

When you start cleaning out a pumpkin you will see quite a few seeds in the center along with what they call 'pulp'. You can save each seed and use them at a later time when you are ready to plant.

This is what a pumpkin seed looks like

You can see pumpkin seed resting here in their hands. They are quite large and easy to handle. Different types of pumpkin have different color and size seeds.

This is a lovely photo of a young pumpkin just after it has started to sprout

Just plant the seed about one inch under the soil. Don't press the soil down too hard on top of the seed as it needs to be able to break through into the sunlight once it sprouts.

Lightly water the area where you planted the seeds - not too much or with too much force as you may dislodge the seed.

Pumpkins are happy to be in the sun all day.

They just love having enough space to sprawl about the garden so make sure you have given them enough room.

If they get in the way of other parts of your garden you can prune them or redirect them by just gently picking up one of the vines and placing it in the direction you want it to grow.

the result of garden seeds

Sometimes people place these pumpkin garden seeds direct into the soil and other times they place them into small growing pots then replant once they get to about this size.

Growing in the pots is a good idea if you live in a frost area as it will give the new plant a better chance to survive. How to grow pumpkins can change depending on your climate.

You don't really need to know many pumpkin facts to be successful at growing them

I recommend this site if you are interested in more detailed pumpkin facts.

I thought it best to just place the basics here on how to grow pumpkins for the children. The grownups can have a look at the other site for more details.

No point in overwhelming the kids as the idea is to make this a fun and easy family project everyone can enjoy in friendly pumpkin patches.

learning how to grow pumpkins can be a heap of family fun

After a while the pumpkin will develop not only large leaves but also what they call 'tendrils'. These are the small twisty pieces you can see in the photo at the end of the leaf.

These tendrils can wind around fences, sheds, corn, stakes in the ground and any other items you have nearby. You can watch them do this or even place objects in their way and watch as they climb all over it as the days and weeks go by.

you can have your very own pumpkin patches in your back garden

Eventually you will start to see masses of large yellow flowers as seen here in the photo. Make sure you don't touch or break any of these as they are the very start of a brand new pumpkin.

It can be great fun to watch the flower progress into such a massive pumpkin over time.

Why not take some photos to keep track of the progress and teach others how to grow pumpkins.

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