Seasonal Garden Vegetables provide plenty of Food and Fun (Pumpkins)

For my grandchildren, fall means pumpkins

If you fertilize pumpkins they’ll get very big and take up a lot of garden space—but they’re worth every inch I give them.

We grow a lot of pumpkins for our grandchildren—they like them big—plus plenty for making pumpkin pies. The smaller varieties have better flavor than the big ones, so we use them for pies.

The bigger jack-o’-lantern types, such as Big Max, can be used for pies but I don’t think they’re as good.

There’s no secret to growing a super-sized pumpkin that might win a ribbon at the fair. Here are the steps:

• Dig a big hole and put in about a bushel of aged manure or compost, or a pound of commercial fertilizer, or some combination of the two. Cover the fertilizer with 3 inches of soil.
• Select seeds like Big Max, a favorite large pumpkin.

• Plant three or four seeds in a hill. Once they sprout and grow two or three leaves, save the healthiest plant and remove the others.
• After the plant blossoms and sets three small pumpkins, pick off any additional blossoms that appear. Also pick off the fuzzy tips of the vines to focus all the plant’s energy into those three little pumpkins.
• When the pumpkins are softball-size, save the best-shaped one, and pick the other two. All plant food will head into that one pumpkin.
• If you want a pumpkin with a perfect shape, roll it gently every now and then to keep it from flattening out on one side or the bottom. Be careful when you do this.
• Side-dress the plant three or four times as it’s growing and give it plenty of water.

• Pumpkins should be harvested when they are full-sized and mature. They should not be left out when a frost hits because they will be injured and won’t keep long. Don’t remove the stem when you pick them. If it breaks off, the pumpkin will be a poor keeper.

Your children will love their own autographed pumpkins

A treat for our grandchildren is a crop of autographed pumpkins.

When some of our pie pumpkins are about softball-size or slightly larger, I write their names on separate pumpkins. I use a ballpoint pen and lightly break through the skin when I write. As the pumpkins expand, so do the names.

The kids don’t see these until it’s time to pick a few pumpkins for Halloween. By then their names have grown 10 times. It’s a joy for Jan and me to watch them discover a pumpkin with their own name on it—and it’s the greatest thrill in the world for them.

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