Pumpkin
Vegetable · warm season
When to plant
- Sow seeds outdoors about 2 weeks after your average last spring frost.
- Ready to harvest about 105 days after planting.
For Halloween, count back ~110 days from mid-October.
Frost dates depend on where you live. Enter your ZIP code to get exact dates.
Dates by zone: 3a 3b 4a 4b 5a 5b 6a 6b 7a 7b 8a 8b 9a 9b 10a 10b
Growing basics
- Sun
- Full sun (6+ hours)
- Spacing
- 48–72 in
- Soil temperature
- At least 65°F
- Time to harvest
- About 105 days
- Plant family
- Squash family (cucurbits)
- Harvest per plant
- About 12 lb
- Seeds keep
- About 4 years
Companions
Good neighbors: Sweet corn, Green beans (bush), Nasturtium
Keep apart: Potato. Potatoes and squash-family crops compete for water and share pests.
Keep apart: Horseradish. Horseradish spreads aggressively. Give it its own spot.
Keep apart: Mint. Mint spreads aggressively into neighbors. Keep it in a pot.
Keep apart: Fennel (bulb). Fennel slows the growth of most garden plants. Grow it on its own.
Keep apart: Sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke). Sunchokes spread aggressively and shade neighbors.
Varieties to try
- Baby Boo 90 days: mini white decorative
- Small Sugar 100 days: pie pumpkin
- Jack O'Lantern 110 days: carving
- Atlantic Giant 120 days: giant; needs lots of space
Pests and problems
Grow it well
Tips
- Cure winter squash before storing it. Cut squash with a few inches of stem, and keep it somewhere warm (about 80°F) for a week or two, until the skin is too hard to dent with a fingernail. Then store it cool and dry, around 50 to 55°F. Cured butternuts keep for months.
- Hand-pollinate squash if the fruit shrivels. Baby squash that turn yellow and rot weren't pollinated. In the morning, pick a male flower (on a plain stem, with no tiny squash behind it), peel back its petals, and dab its center into a female flower.
- Scrape off squash bug eggs. Every few days, check under squash and pumpkin leaves for clusters of shiny bronze eggs, and crush them or lift them off with a piece of tape. Catching them before they hatch saves a lot of trouble.
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