Anyone grow pumpkins in their yard?

[l008com]

Obviously a little late this year. But I was thinking it would be cool to grow one or two in my yard next year. Except I don't have (or particularly want) a garden. With my sunflowers, I just grow them right out of the lawn. That doesn't seem very practical with a pumpkin, since I'd be hitting it with a weed wacker etc. How do the plants even grow? And do they die every year or do they come back?

 

[Chuck]

Pumpkins are an annual sprawling vine and propagate from seed.

 

[Esther Knapicius]

Reminds me----------One of my "group" homes I had, had gotten a pumpkin for Halloween, so after halloween they just left it out there to rot, and snow got on it etc. I was over there in the summer and noticed seeds had sprouted and it was growing nicely. Can always count on group homes to not do things.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

I grew them years ago. I planted maybe 16 plants each year and the best year I ended up with 12 healthy pumpkins. I had a variety that grows smaller pumpkins though, I've never tried growing one of the more "normal" sized pumpkins.

You do pretty much need a dedicated space for them. Pumpkin plants are vines, and they absolutely take off in late summer and require a decent amount of space. I had mine in an area that was probably around 10' x 10' and they filled that space up and I occasionally had to adjust them because they'd try to wander out of that space.

In my experience they weren't difficult to grow, you just need to make sure they get enough water. My pumpkins were far from a water source so eventually I stopped growing them as I got tired of pulling 70+ feet of hose out to them all the time. Otherwise the only other issue I had were squash bugs, but I'd just scrape the egg masses off and ignore the adults. I don't think squash bugs are as much of an issue on large plants but can kill young plants.

 

[Meadowlark]

Obviously a little late this year. But I was thinking it would be cool to grow one or two in my yard

It is very cool to grow them even just one or two. In my climate, i start them about the first of August and baby them through the heat until fall when they really take off in growth.

Here they mature in about 100 days and can never survive the full summer, but starting just ahead of cool temps' late summer works for me. Fun to grow and not much trouble at all especially in your climate where they would be fine through the summer.