Thanks I am watching this in May 2022. Just planted out my baby pumpkin plants so was refreshing my memory on keeping them healthy. I don't grow too many, so I immediately cut up and blanch pumpkin, storing the now blanched chunks in the freezer, and the seeds are roasted to enjoy as harvested. So I don't cure, but you can freeze pumpkin if anyone didn't know, so long as you scoop it out and peel just the thin outer skin and cut the thick skin into chunks and blanch in boiling water first. I then take from the freezer and roast, as you showed in the video there, or I might put smaller chunks in stew, or make into soup, or mash and puree into pumpkin pie with nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and concentrated milk.
Excellent video. Straight to the point and very thorough. It was the best one I have watched thus far and there were many before it. Thanks again and keep up the great work. It has helped me as I am a beginner and plan to go full green my family only eating what we grow and using only natural resources to help with the carbon foot print. So I have much to learn.
Excellent video. Learned several new things. I am glad I came across your video. Never knew that curing helps in storing for a long period. Also I had powdery mildew issue, which you explained very well. I liked your video because you explained what to do and what not to do; the "what not to do" part is very useful. I used fungicide on bean leaves which had powdery mildew. However, it was too late when I applied. All the leaves were almost white when I applied. I am glad that you explained (in a reply to a viewer's comment) to apply milk (30%) and water (70%) mixture before or early stages of the powdery mildew attack. Glad to know that the affected leaves need to be removed from the vine and composted or burnt. Also I learned that the pumpkin should not come in direct contact with soil. One of my pumpkin's stem rotted when I plucked it (almost ripened). From now on I will try to put something under the rest of the pumpkins this year. I see few stink bugs here and there on the pumpkin and zucchini leaves. I sprayed soap, oil and water mixture to kill the stink bugs. I gave up because it burnt the young leaves of chili plants which had stink bugs. It may be because my solution was too concentrated with liquid dish soap. You or viewers may suggest any solution for the stink bugs. Thanks again for sharing your great knowledge and experience. I will do two things - 1) remove all the leaves which are already infested with powdery mildew, 2) spray milk and water mixture on the leaves which are beginning to get powdery mildew. Hats off, Sir for a clear explanation, and clear and informative videography!
What an excellent video- informative, clear, really useful information and good demonstrations, the best video on pumpkins I have seen so far (and trust me, I have seen a lot), A+++
Very informative mate, nice video. Me and my fiancé have just started growing some pumpkin so needed some tips and you have gave us everything we needed to know. So thank you and keep up the great work 😊
Thanks for the informative video! I have 25 pumpkins this year and it's the first time I've grown them. I didn't realize that I had to cure them which explains why mine are already wilting. :( Oh well, now I know for next year's crop. Thanks again!
Thanks for the tips. Last autumn we had a snap frost one month before the expected first frost date. Some pumpkins were write offs, but some still held for 3 months before those spots appeared on the skin. Maybe if I wiped with oil, they might have stored longer. Thanks again, this season I hope will be more vigilant about frost.
Jeez, who would have known that it takes so much to grow a pumpkin. I just stuck some seeds in the soil, left it to its own and it provided me and my family with so much pumpkin that we had to give much to the neighbors and friends. Mind you, New Zealand is a great place to grow pumpkin without much ado. They just grow of their own accord and a little mildew on the leaves did not stifle any growth either. Blessed is the ignorant. :-) Greetings, Rita
Great video! For the milk and water solution that prevents and helps treat mildew on the leaves, what is the ratio of milk to water that I should be using? Also does this work on mildew on other vegetable leaves too (ie. Squash, zucchini etc)?
I would go for around 30% milk to 70% water. The spray should work on all squash family plants. More here: www.growveg.com.au/guides/using-milk-to-prevent-powdery-mildew/
Numerous gardening experts say to use a mixture of milk and water to control powdery mildew. None of them ever says what ratio of milk to water the mix should be. So, what is the correct ratio?
The powdery mildew-infected leaves should be fine to add to the compost pile because the fungal disease is fairly short lived, so when the leaves decompose, the mildew will die off. If you leave the compost to fully decompose, the resulting material should be fine to use around your plants without the risk of carrying over disease to the next crop.
We had a pumpkin plant spring up unexpectedly this year on our back hill. There are now three large pumpkins. Once we harvest them, what should we do with the rest of the plant? Is it likely to grow back next year?
That's brilliant - what a bonus! The pumpkin plant will die back, so harvest the pumpkins then remove the plant to the compost heap and sow again next spring.
i've germinated some small sugar pumpkin seeds but haven't thought far enough as to where to plant them. i have a lot of relatively large garden pots (diameter 30-40cm, 40cm deep), would this be sufficient room for them to grow? i don't own the garden i am using so unfortunately cannot build beds or dig up the grass lawm
They may just about grow in those pots, but ideally they'd have more space than this to grow. You will need to keep the plants well watered and fed, but do this and you may well get a few fruits.
Great and useful information, as usual. I , on the contrary am looking for a way to obtain many small (Hokkaido) pumpkins, that are beter suited for a household of 2. Any suggestions?
Yes, they can be cured outside. The important thing is that they are kept dry. If it's very, very hot, then a light shade cloth might be an advantage to stop the fruits overheating.
I've been searching high and low and I can't get an answer. What do you know about cantaloupe? My plants look amazing. Green and Lush leaves. I only this week had a little problem with yellowing leaves at the base of the plants because of heavy rain we had. But the plants are not flowering and the vines are extremely long. If I could untangle them probably would be in some cases as big as 15 feet long. The problem is I haven't seen any flowering yet. What am I doing wrong? Thank you
It sounds like your soil is probably very high in nitrogen, which encourages lots of lush growth at the expense of flowers. I would start feeding plants with a fertiliser high in potassium - a liquid tomato feed would be perfect - to encourage flowers to form. Is the plant in sunshine? This is important for flower production too.
@@GrowVeg yes, plenty of sunshine and I'm doing a lot of companion planting this year. Around that whole corner, which is roughly 13 feet on each side, starts with the melons, then pumpkins, and spaghetti squash nearby. In-between the melons and the pumpkins I have corn. Everything else is doing fine. The pumpkin flowered immediately. The corn is doing amazing and the nearby spaghetti squash it's also growing like crazy. That's why I was confused about no flowers on the cantaloupe. In fact my entire Garden is doing amazing this year. green beans in another area. Tomatoes eggplant peppers everything is doing so well. The first round of peas did very well and I have other things in there too. The entire Garden is probably 30 ft by 30 ft feet. My tomatoes eggplant peppers cucumbers are in another part of the yard. All doing very well. Even my herbs are doing good this year. Due to weather and a late start, the past couple of years here in Connecticut have been horrible for timing. I'm actually impressed with myself this year LOL LOL. But I'll try what you suggested I just don't want to add something that the neighboring plants don't need so I'll be careful where I put the new fertilizer. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for responding.
I've planted pumpkins for about four or five years and they've all grown great. The plants themselves grew great again this year, but they didn't produce any female flowers and consequently no actual pumpkins. Any idea why that might have happened?
I just pulled in 60 pumpkins from my first time effort. The deer had finally discovered them. The hot, dry summer caused them to mature quickly. I'm curing them in my 4 season room, and then to the cellar. I was told to use a fan during storage, which I will. If they are still good I'll sell them Oct. 15th. Out of curiosity, what's the going price for a good 15-20 lb. carver in Europe?
Sounds like you've got an impressive haul of pumpkins there! A large pumpkin, 15-20 lb, would tend to fetch around £3 to £4 in the UK, which is around US$4 to US$5. Some places charge a lot more than this - these are cheap grocery store prices.
I accidentally "fully" cut the vine form a nearly mature pumpkin. Can that be put in the dirt and save the pumpkin the same as one that is still partially attached or is all lost? Thank you, great video.
If it's been cut through then I'm afraid it can't saved. If the pumpkin is nearly mature though you could try bringing it under cover to help finish ripening and curing it. It may well get over the finishing line. If not, eat it up as soon as you're able.
Using a amino acid mixed with calcium (home made elements are best or NPK brand is great too) . Home made calcium with vinegar & egg shells . unconventionalfarmer website is good. These things are getting very common and available in liquid or powder form. Need to use both those specifically. These elements mixed together become chelated then will be absorbed 1000 times as much in the ion channels of a plant, thus making its pectin internal fluid so mildews and spores in the environment can not absorb hardly at all and will not affect plants so much. I grow this squash family pants yearly also.
Yes, you could use dried grass clippings to help mulch the soil around pumpkin plants, or piled up under the developing fruits to keep them off the soil.
Pumpkins and squashes tend not to get blossom end rot. This affect tomatoes and related plants such as peppers and aubergines/egg plants. The main cause is simply a lack of soil moisture.
ouf this is the confirmation I was looking for ! thanks a lot !!!! It is the first year I have three kinds of pumpkins , one is the known orange halloweenpumpkin and the other is a smaller version of such with deeper orange and the other one the tasty butternut , I was not entirely sure but while harvesting I noticed small specks of desease on some of them and I was placing them before a window in a room with temp about 15-20° Celsius , a lot seem to be so much better now and the rest is ready for selling and storing ( not selling them all ;-) ) but is it the same for butternut ? because this one looks to be healing differently ? oh and about storage ? I have my harvest in wooden crates with nothing but newspapers in it and stores well ! today continuing my butternuts as I noticed a lot of them were far from harvesting ! and then again checking the other day I saw I should have harvested them because a lot of them are rotten :-(( , such a waste ! ty for this vid !
Butternut squashes are stored in much the same way as pumpkins. They are both types of winter squash, so their treatment is the same. Hope you manage to salvage some of the butternut squashes.
Hi ! ty for your reply here ! I was not sure but indeed stored a lot of them already but just the same as the pumpkins , only this year won't be selling any , I keep them to have food all year round so this is my winter stash given the fact I should have harvested sooner or atleast putted plates underneath them so they would have been healed just on the ground , got much waste here this year ! my (soon to B ) husband does not longer believe we should grow pumpkins or squashes next year but I think it is just a lesson because this is the first time we decided to take squash too . Still a lot of squash for our family is rescued thanks to watching the youtube channel and being a little bit " creative " ;-) ! ty !
I have a question.... I am growing pumpkins. Naively thought my garden space was big enough. So I did what I do to my tomatoes...I pruned them. I think this was a no no as my blooms started closing and dropping off. Is there some way I can fix this?
Leave the pumpkin to grow if you can. You can train the stems in on themselves to keep them neater by using sticks to fix stems into position and train them in a certain direction. Or leave them to grow up trellising or something similar, which will save on precious ground space.
We cut the pumpkin off the vine leaving a good amount of stem. When you showed storing the pumpkin, the stem was very short. At what point do you cut the stem so short?
It generally best to leave a T-shaped stem when harvesting pumpkins and winter squashes. So the short stem coming from the fruit and then a little of the main plant stem either side of it. The stems cut short in the video probably shouldn't have been cut that short!
@@GrowVeg thank you! So then when the pumpkins sit for two weeks and I turn them over for another two weeks, they will sit cockeyed because of the stem being so long. This is okay? These are my first pumpkins and I want to do them correctly!! Also, it seemed you cut one of the pumpkins off when the vine was dried up and spindly. Is it okay to wait this long?
Pumpkins can be left on the plant quite late and are usually harvested after the plant itself has begun to die off. So yes, it's fine to wait until the vine is dried up and spindly, as you will know for sure that the pumpkin is mature. When it comes to curing, try to support the pumpkin so it isn't placing all of its weight on the stem. Pressure on the stem could damage it or soften the skin of the pumpkin around it.
If the leaves haven't completely drooped then you're doing just fine. Or dig down a few inches/cm and check the moisture at root level. If it's dry, water. With pumpkins (unless it's very overcast and rainy) it's probably better to err on the side of more watering than not enough - if you want to help the fruits along.
