First Time Pumpkin Grower

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I am doing what I think is quite a successful job at growing Pumpkins for the first time. Oh wow they have gone wild but I am impressed.
I have some very good size Pumpkins on my raised beds but powdery mildew is starting to creep around. I am treating them with a mix of washing up liquid water and a dash of tea tree oil.
I am hoping they ripen before they are destroyed. Can anyone tell me when these lovely Pumpkins are likely to turn Orange as they are a deep rich green at the moment.
 
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I have only grown a pumpkin by accident. A neighbor sawing me digging up the lot when I first moved in. She handed a seedling over the fence and said "it is either a squash, cantelope or pumpkin" and I said thank you. Put in near the edge of my garden and one day I noticed a large white ball. If I recall it took about 120 days to turn into a big orange pumkin. It went from white to green to orange. I guess it also depends where you live.

Hope you get a great mildew and pest free crop!
 
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I am doing what I think is quite a successful job at growing Pumpkins for the first time. Oh wow they have gone wild but I am impressed.
I have some very good size Pumpkins on my raised beds but powdery mildew is starting to creep around. I am treating them with a mix of washing up liquid water and a dash of tea tree oil.
I am hoping they ripen before they are destroyed. Can anyone tell me when these lovely Pumpkins are likely to turn Orange as they are a deep rich green at the moment.
I had the same problem. I grew a pumpkin plant for the first time this year - a pie variety - and had two nice little pumpkins on the vine. We went on holidays, and when we came back the vine was dead from powdery mildew. But a bit of frantic searching online and I found out that you can ripen pumpkins off the vine. You need to keep a nice long stem on them, wash off any dirt on them and dry them, then put them in a sunny location, and turn them daily so that the sun gets to all the pumpkin. If it's going to get cold at night, you should bring them indoors, but I have left mine out when it's been as low as 4 degrees Celsius and they've been fine. They are both half ripe now and haven't started to go soft (which is the danger of ripening them off the vine, so I am hopeful.

You should make sure that the pumpkins on the plants are able to get full sun, and if the vines die before they ripen, give ripening them off the vine a try. Good luck!!!
 
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Also you can try spraying the vines with 1 part milk to 3 parts water. You need to do it on a sunny day, because the proteins in the milk react with sunlight to kill the mold spores. You repeat about once a week
 
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I figure that growing pumpkins is a lot like growing squash, I have yet to try it out but some of these ideas have given me a push to try it out, though I am pretty sure it is way to late in the season to grow pumpkins. Ah well I will have to try them out next year.
 

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