Thread: Giant Pumpkins, anyone?

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This year, I figure, what the heck, give these a shot -

http://www.howarddill.com/

Does anybody here have any experience with these? Any seeds or Pumpkin varieties that should be considered?

Honestly, yeah, I've grown them - once.

Never again. That breed is for massive sculptors who perform at fairs and art shows, and it's for champion growers to win prizes.

It ain't good for much else.

1.) It needs stupid amounts of water every day.
2.) the vine needs to babied and protected, despite being 3-5 inches thick.
3.) The fruit will likely fail (bugs, rot, weather damage) before it matures.

and usually giant growers prep the growing area a year in advance, digging large pits and filling them with potting soil, fish emulsion, bone meal, etc.

The best carving pumpkin on the market for most folks is the Howden.
http://www.neseed.com/Pumpkin_i_Howd..._i_p/32491.htm

Hope that helps.

As a follow-up, here is the story with mine.

It was an Atlantic giant, ordered from a catalog. We fertilized and watered the patch for a while before planting a mound.
All flowers were pollinated with a brush, and the weakest were all pinched off until we had a dark green beachball in the middle of the yard.

The bottom started to rot.

We tried keeping fresh straw under the fruit, but it reached the point where two of us couldn't lift it up enough to shove straw all the way under it.

So it started to get a little slimey on the underside.

We were hoping we could maybe give the skin a beachwater bath and treat the plant with fungicide, because the rot was surface, just beginning to discolor the skin. There was no sign it was in the fruit yet.
First we had to get the rotten side up, so three of us went out to turn it gently to the side.

The entire fruit collapsed.
No rot inside, no fungus or cracking - it was just too big to handle three people tilting it to the side.
Maybe it had a thinner rind than normal.
Maybe it didn't have enough water, despite the constant use of a soaker hose on the vine.

It was too big for us to handle effectively.

Hey Wolfman. I'm pretty sure Julianne on the forum grows the large pumpkins. I have seen theme on her Facebook so I'm pretty sure she will also have the pics on her HF profile as well.

Good luck with the growing.

I am growing them for my 3rd year. Last year had decent luck but did have a vine snap, polination problems and an early freeze. Year before was very successful. Water lots, have lots of loose deep soil to plant, add fertilizer and other goodies throughout the summer and give it room. The vines last year crawled 30 some feet every direction.

wow wolfman! thanks for the awesome link! I have looked everywhere for the "Cinderella" pumpkins. They dont have a picture of them on their seeds page but these pumpkins are supposed to be a beautiful red color. I was thinking these would look great carved with devil themes. Put some horns on them, ect. They also have Lumina white pumpkins, so I can kill 2 birds with one order! yay!

Ugh, I can NOT seem to grow pumpkins in the soil out here...least of all giants. Are we allowed to post links here or is that against TOS? Do you know about Perry's Greenhouse? The URL is just like that with no spaces or punctuation. Anyway...people there grow competitively...there are detailed blogs and the whole bit...I am on there but just to grow my little gourds. There's tons of great info on there.

One year I would like to get a pack of every type of seed and see what happens with them. I haven't had any luck with giant pumpkins so far. They never seem to get big and if I got them bigger they went all mushy.

Im trying to grow a giant pumpkin this year too. I get most of my info from bigpumpkins. com They are a great bunch of people from complete newbies to heavy hitters.

good idea to grow one, can't wait to see pics once its started