Pumpkins are not squash

Pumpkins grew very easily in Qld. Our preferred variety was Jap pumpkin. One vine seemed to grow no less than 12 pumpkins around the 4 to 5 kg mark. The only thing to watch was the soil moisture during the hot days. Sometimes the humidity/overhead watering caused either downy or powdery mildew, which I often used to try to prevent with a 10% milk 90% water spray.

Life has not been as easy since moving to Tassie. In the 2010/11 summer,  I planted one waltham butternut and one sugar pie. I got 3 fairly bland tasting butternuts and the sugar pies seemed to struggle to mature before the April frosts arrived. This 2010/11 summer did feel like a cool one however the location they were planted did not take full advantage of the available sunlight (I had little choice at the place we were renting), plus a mountain nearby reduced the evening sunlight by another couple of hours.

During the 2011/12 summer I did not place a great deal of time into pumpkins. I had not yet extended the size of the veg patch (at that time about 12m by 15m) and decided to not bother to save space for the year. I did plant two red kurri plants, one which the soil was not ideal and the other was better but i did not allow it ample room. However I did get some red kurri pumpkins which we thought were much better tasting this time round, especially in a risotto. I also planted a jap pumpkin to see what happened. As I suspected, it grew very large but only started showing female flowers late march which was too late to mature the large pumpkins before cool nights and frosts returned. With better planning I will try the jap again int he future maybe with some black plastic on the soil to get the soil warmth up to speed up the growing season.

After extending the size of the veg patch to keep out rabbits and wallabies (i did have to fine tune it a bit), I decided to put more effort into the pumpkins for the 2012/13 summer season. This season I germinated three seeds in each punnet in the hothouse. I reduced these to two of the stronger growers. I read Steve Solomons advice on direct seeding pumpkin, however the effort into chitting the seed, watching for rain and planting in a dry spell (does this happen in October in Tas??) and replanting each week if they don't germinate (pumpkin seeds have soil temp requirements and tas spring can be quite volatile) put me off his advice and I decided to stick to what I had done before and raise in hot house before transplanting. Maybe I should have taken his advice, but time will tell.

This year I have planted 9 pumpkins of the following varieties:

• Red kurri
• Golden Nugget
• Butternut early (sourced from Inspirations Seeds)
• Buttercup

The bed I prepped during winter by mowing the grass low, laying down sheep poo, then newspaper, covering with hay/barleystraw/lucerne and more poo. Some of the barley straw blew off with some big winds we got so i may stick to the cheaper hay in future (tho more grass seeds germinate). I use this method now rather than kill my back with digging. Our soils are clodden together when waterlogged in winter so I find this method slower, but better for grass removal, soil improvement and helps to raise the height of the bed. When planting the pumpkin, I dumped a wheelbarrow load of soil for each pumpkin which had poo and mushroom compost mixed into it. Each pumpkin was planted into this soil.  I planted one out Oct 28 to see if it would take that early. It did well and I planted the rest out Nov 4th. We did have some warm weather around this time. Had we experienced a cold front I would have waited.

6 pumpkins early Dec 2012

6 pumpkins by Dec 28th. There has been vigorous growth during December.

 I have been impressed by the growth rate of the golden nugget. These are supposed to mature early and it looks like they will. Some tell me they are not the best tasting, but I like to try things myself as our taste buds are all different. The buttercup and butternut early have made real progress over the past 10 days, with one trailing arm now 2m long on a buttercup (would be longer had I not pinched the end off), with female flowers wide open and bees galore.

The golden nugget are forming.

So far this season looks like we will harvest an ample number of pumpkins. How they taste will be determined. I have been determined to keep the soil moist and mulched further mid Dec once the soil was warm to keep moisture in. I will report back at the end of season with the final harvest and weights and yields etc.

Happy pumpkining (no their not squash)

Dave Sayers