How to Grow Pumpkins from Seed

Growing pumpkins from seed is one of the most satisfying garden traditions we keep. It is amazing how one small seed can grow such a large plant with vines spreading all over your garden and producing multiple pumpkins per plant. It is so rewarding to grow your own pumpkins as a gardener. Even if you love to visit a pumpkin patch each year for the fun of it, you should try growing pumpkins from seed.

Before you buy a packet of pumpkin seeds, you will need to take a good look at your growing space. Then decide if you have the room to grow pumpkins.

They can take up a large amount of space. So if you are growing in a small backyard, you might not have enough space without being creative. You could use a cattle panel to help with making an arch for vertical growing. Or make sure you grow a bush variety that does not take up as much space.

However, if you have a large space for pumpkins, you can try out several varieties this year. There are so many fun varieties that you can grow that are not seen in the stores or even at farm stands as much.

Choosing Pumpkin Varieties to Grow

Make sure you pay attention to the type you buy. There are so many different sizes and colors and growing habits. I broke down the types of pumpkins into three categories you might want to think about when growing pumpkins.

large carving pumpkins

If your family likes to carve pumpkins every year, you are going to want to make sure you grow the right variety. These are the large orange (or white) pumpkins that are a good canvas for carving. These are also good for decorating around your home. If you are not going to carve them, they are a good bang for their buck for decorating. They will fill a lot of the decorating space on your front porch or by the mailbox.

This year we are going to try out a few varieties of giant pumpkins. We noticed a lot of neighbors in our rural area had giant pumpkins out by their driveways this last year. We thought it would be such a fun idea to see how large of a pumpkin we can grow. Good ones for this would be Big Max, Jack O Lantern, or the Howden pumpkin. If you want to go for a competition pumpkin, how about Competition that can grow to be hundreds of pounds?

pie pumpkins

Pie pumpkins are for making pie or any other pumpkin treat. They are small and sweeter than the large carving pumpkins. While all pumpkins are edible, these are the type most people choose to grow to eat. You will use these to make pumpkin puree. Try out this one called sugar pie.

If you need a way to eat this yummy pumpkin, try out the blog’s most popular recipe that uses pumpkin puree.

unique color or shape heirloom pumpkins

This is the category that I love to grow pumpkins from. There are so many different types of pumpkins out there that you won’t find at the store or even at the pumpkin patch. The shapes and colors are endless.

Some of our favorites in this category have been Cinderella, Jarrahdale, and Musquee de Provence. They are a bit more of a unique shape and the colors are so fun.

A lot of the pumpkins in this category are good for eating too with great flavor and storage ability. They can be duel purpose for decorating and eating. Make sure they come in before the frost, though. Then you can store them and eat when ready. If it happens to frost before you get them in, you can just roast them right away to eat.

mini pumpkins

If you love those little mini pumpkins that are used for decorating, you will love how fun they are to grow. Since they are so small, you sometimes have to search for them under the large leaves. They come in orange, white, and mixed colors. Look how fun these varieties are: baby boo and Lil Pump-ke-mon.

If you are wondering what varieties to plant, there are so many to try. Think of the reasons you want to use the pumpkins and that will help guide you.

If you are wanting to grow pumpkins for eating as the main goal, here is a video from Little Mountain Ranch on Youtube that goes over the best tasting of 19 different types of squash and pumpkin.

How to Start Plants from Seed

First make sure you have enough room to plant your pumpkins. They will take up a lot of room.

Next, make sure you have well drained and very fertile soil. Pumpkins are heavy feeders that will do best being planted with a lot of compost or well rotted manure.

Direct Sow or Start Inside

Decide if you are going to direct sow your seeds (plant them directly in the garden) or start them inside. If you live in a northern climate like me with a shorter growing season, you might want to give your seeds a head start inside.

You do not want to make the mistake of planting outside too early. With direct sowing of seeds or a plant start, pumpkins do best a few weeks after the last frost date. These plants do best with warm soil.

Also, check the seed packet to see how many growing days your pumpkin variety needs. Many will take around 100 days.

If you do start pumpkin seeds inside, I would suggest only 2-3 weeks before the last frost because the plants can get very leggy and they will not transplant as well.

If you are in a climate with a longer growing season, you can plant pumpkin seeds directly into the ground. To do this, mound up the soil where you plant and give a generous amount of compost or rotted manure to the mound. Sow 3 to 4 seeds per mound. If they all come up, you can thin to the 1-3 best looking seedlings.

Make mounds five to six feet apart to give enough growing space.

When you plant a seedling plant out to the garden, you will just plant one per mound.

How to Take Care of Your Growing Pumpkins

water

Make sure your pumpkins are getting enough water. As you might know, I rarely need to water my garden in Wisconsin because we get so much rain, especially in the early summer. But you will want to make sure that you have hoses to reach your patch incase you need to water them. They should get around an inch of moisture a week.

The ideal set up with watering pumpkins would be a drip irrigation system so that the roots will get the water and the leaves will not. You want to avoid watering the leaves because they are prone to fungal disease if the leaves get too much water. If you do not have an irrigation system, just make sure to water the soil around the plant if possible.

mulch

Pumpkins grow very quickly, and their leaves will shade out the ground. Weeds will not be too much of a problem once you get to the stage where the leaves shade them out.

But until then, you might consider adding a mulch layer of dried leaves or grass clippings to keep the weed pressure down. The layer of mulch will also be good to keep the moisture in the soil. You do not want to add a thick layer of mulch too early, though, before the ground has warmed up enough. It can stunt the growth of the pumpkins.

pollination

Make sure you have bees in your garden to pollinate your pumpkins. Grow a section of wild flowers or some sunflowers near your pumpkins to bring the bees to your patch.

Zinnias are also a great flower to attract pollinators and they don’t require too much care, which is good if your pumpkin patch is out farther than the rest of the garden like mine is.

How to Harvest Pumpkins

Sometimes the first frost threatens to come before we are ready to harvest our pumpkins. A light frost won’t do too much damage, but you do not want to leave your pumpkins out in the garden through a deep frost. It will damage the pumpkin and make it so they will not cure and store properly.

If you know a deep frost is coming, ignore the tips below and harvest your pumpkins anyway. Bring them inside to protect from the frost.

Harvesting

You will notice the plants start to die back in the fall and you might start to see pumpkins that you didn’t even know were growing.

You want to leave your pumpkins on the vine as the plants are dying back. It is good that they fully developed on the vine and turn a nice deep orange (or the color they are supposed to be). Here is what else to look for.

The stem should be brown and drying out.

Test the skin of the pumpkin with the fingernail test. Try to push your fingernail into the skin. It is leaves much of a mark, leave it on the vine a bit longer.

Lastly, you can give it a tap and see if it sounds hollow.

If all these criteria are met, go ahead and cut the stem with a knife, leaving a few inches of stem attached. If you try to rip it off the vine, you might rip off the stem and that would be a bummer!

Curing

Curing your pumpkins will ensure they last as long as possible in storage. It also condenses the sugars and makes the pumpkins taste sweeter.

After the pumpkins are fully developed, their skin starts to dry out as waters evaporate out of it. Cutting it off the vine helps this step even more. The skin hardens as it dries even before cutting it off the plant, but more after.

You can leave the pumpkins right next to the vine where you cut them off or gather them and bring them closer to the house where you will store them after frost.

The ideal curing temperature is 80-85 degrees for 10-14 days in the sun. If you need to bring your pumpkins indoors due to a frost coming, you can leave them out near a wood stove or in a window that lets sun in.

After the pumpkins are done curing, you can move them to long term storage.

Storage

The ideal storage for pumpkins is a cold storage of 50-55 degrees. Most people have to do the best they can because they have a hard time getting these temps without a root cellar or cold storage room.

We have a modified cellar and it does have a heat vent from the house that we are not able to cover up. It stays at a great temperature in the winter, but if we have a nice long warm autumn, it can be a bit too warm down there. So we do our best with the temps and our pumpkins store a good amount of time.

We have learned that you want to store your pumpkins up off the ground. They might freeze or start to rot sooner if they are placed on concrete flooring. We put them up on a wire shelf where they get a lot of airflow around them.

For best storage, the stem should also stay attached. If it did not stay attached, you will want to process those pumpkins sooner than later and get them eaten or pureed and stored for later use.

There’s something deeply rewarding about growing pumpkins from seed—it’s one of our favorite things to do in the garden.