Why do we grow pumpkins?

Everyone loves pumpkins. Don’t they?  I love to grow them but to be honest I could take it or leave it as food apart from the seeds which are awesome toasted with sea salt.  My kids love to make pumpkin lanterns with them for 10 minutes then get bored and I have to finish them off and my wife can’t even stand to be in the same room as a pumpkin if she can avoid it.  We can safely say then that our big orange obsession is actually a bit marmite?  I asked around the allotment and most people I spoke to said that they don’t eat them.  So why is it that walking around the allotments almost every plot has a pumpkin when they are for sale at Halloween for a fraction of the price of a packet of seeds? 

I think the answer lies in the thrill gardeners get from growing something so big.  We all have a desire to control nature to some degree on our allotments and in our gardens.  We want to bend nature to our will so what bigger buzz than growing something the size a 5p piece into something which weighs upwards of 1 ton. 

Its not just us allotmenteer though, competitive pumpkin growing is a serious business.  On the 9 October 2016 a German man named Mathias Willeminjs took the world record with a pumpkin weighing in at a staggering 1190kg! 

Pumpkin growing has always been shrouded in myth, with many large pumpkin growers keeping their propagation, feeding and watering methods strictly secret bringing on rumours about feeding them best bitter or only watering them at midnight. 

Although I’ve never grown a world record contender or even a pumpkin weighing over 50kg I have had some success with growing them big.  Here is my advice on growing a giant pumpkin.

1.        Pick a good cultivar, I tend to go for something like Atlantic Giant which I am assured can grown to over 300lb.

2.       Sow the seeds in a good quality compost in March.  Once sown keep them in the greenhouse or on the windowsill.

3.       Plant them out.  It is highly important not to let frost get to your pumpkin plants.  I choose the area I’m going to plant ma pumpkin carefully.  I always plant in the centre of the plot in full sun.  I dig a hole roughly the size of a dustbin lid and dig in plenty of well rotted manure as pumpkins are very hungry crops. 

4.       Keep watering especially if there has been no rain.  Once one pumpkin has set snip out the growing tip and feed regularly with a high potassium plant food.

5.       Enjoy growing something enormous!

Id love to see some of your giant pumpkin pics.  Good luck!