How to grow juicy sweet pumpkin on your site?
Among the inhabitants of garden beds, pumpkins are not the last in popularity, but in terms of ease of care and ability to store for a long time, they have no equal at all. Perhaps that is why gardeners often do not pay due attention to culture, letting the growth and development of powerful plants take their course.
As a result, due to poor pollination or mistakes in grooming, the harvest is not as plentiful as desired. The fruits are not pleasing in taste, rot at the stage of the ovary and are poorly stored.
How do you grow a pumpkin that is truly delicious? What activities does culture care include? And what are the signs to look out for when watching a pumpkin grow?
Pre-sowing activities
Seedsobtained from fruits grown in their own garden, before planting, must be pickled, disinfecting from diseases and pests with the help of a solution of potassium permanganate. The seeds are in the liquid for up to 30 minutes. After that, a viable inoculum is selected by immersing a 25% saline solution:
- Empty, insufficiently ripe seeds will give themselves away by floating to the surface.
- Submerged - ready to give healthy large shoots.
Selected healthy seeds are washed in clean water and for about 3 hours, dried at 55–60 ° C and bubbled for 18–24 hours.
How a pumpkin grows: necessary conditions and features
In order to grow a sweet juicy pumpkin on your site, you must adhere to the rules crop rotation and the requirements of the culture for the conditions in the beds. As a rule, plants from the pumpkin family can return to the previous growing time only after 4–5 years. And the best harvest can be obtained by planting seeds after legumes or crucifers.
How to grow a pumpkin in a summer cottage, what conditions does this culture need? Pumpkins of all varieties, whether it be zucchini plucked in the green phase, or late-ripening nutmeg varieties, are very demanding on lighting conditions.
With a lack of sun, the number of ovaries decreases, the plants stretch, the risk of fungal diseases, rot and pest attacks increases.
At the stage of active growth, that is, from the moment the first shoots appear to a few true leaves, plants should be exposed to light from 9 to 10 hours. This mode will bring the formation of female flowers closer. The optimal daylight hours for an already fruiting pumpkin is 10-12 hours.
A video about growing pumpkin in the open field tells in detail about agricultural technology and the tricks of growing this valuable vegetable crop. In household plots where it is often assumed watering pumpkins in the open field are cultivated in wide beds, up to 3 meters.
Arrangement of high ridges will help to get an early harvest even in adverse weather conditions and protect the fruits from decay in a rainy, cold summer.
For climbing pumpkin varieties, rather large gaps between plants from 150 to 300 cm are required.
Bush forms are more compact and do not require large areas to feed the fruits, so the distance between pumpkins in this case is reduced to 70-100 cm.
One of the most effective ways to grow sweet, juicy pumpkins on your site can be considered the use of seedlings for planting in open ground. If the seeds are sown in peat pots or large tablets, when they get into the ground, the root system is not injured, which means that you can wait for the harvest 3-4 weeks earlier:
- Planting in open ground is carried out when the soil is sufficiently warmed up. Zucchini and most common hard-bore gourds are grown in soil temperatures of 12-14 ° C.
- And for the most thermophilic nutmeg gourd, the soil should be warmed up to 15-16 ° C.
Outdoor pumpkin care
Even short-term frosts are destructive for seedlings, when the temperature on the soil drops to minus marks. For normal growth and fruit formation, pumpkins need a temperature in the range of 22-28 ° C. If the air is cooler, plant development slows down, the rate of appearance of flowers and ovary decreases.
A film or covering material will help protect young seedlings from the manifestations of changeable weather in early summer.
Sowing seeds or planting seedlings is carried out on a covering spread on the ground, in which cross-shaped cuts are made. They are expanded as they grow. As a result, due to less moisture evaporation and 4–5 ° C higher soil heating, pumpkin develops faster and bears fruit more readily. The labor costs for pumpkin care are also reduced.
As long as the plants are small, it is imperative to keep the soil loose and prevent the crust from disturbing the penetration of moisture and oxygen. As a measure of pumpkin care, it is useful to mulch the space between plants on the ridges with sawdust, sand, if the soil is clay, or straw. During the second loosening, carried out 30 days after the emergence of shoots, weeds are removed and the growing lashes are laid out.
Loosening and weeding is convenient to carry out simultaneously with watering, while cultivating the soil should not be deeper than 5-7 cm, so as not to damage the surface roots.
How often to water the pumpkin outdoors?
The pumpkin root system is designed in such a way that, even in dry periods, it is able to provide the plant with the required amount of moisture. A well-visible hard pile that covers young stems, cuttings, leaf plates and even partly corollas of flowers helps to avoid drying out of the green part.
And yet the crop needs a lot of moisture, and the schedule of rare but abundant watering should be consistent with the development of the plant and the care of the pumpkin plantings. Before the first loosening and hilling, depending on the weather, pumpkins are abundantly watered once or twice. And then take a break for 2-3 weeks to stimulate active formation and growth of roots.
As soon as female flowers appear on the plants, and the formation of fruits begins, you need to water the pumpkin more often, for example, after 7-10 days.
This mode is maintained while the pumpkins are poured and added in size. In August, pumpkin watering becomes less frequent. Such a measure is intended to force the fruits to accumulate sugar and form a strong bark, which will have to withstand winter storage. Watching how the pumpkin grows, 20-25 days before harvesting, watering is stopped altogether.
As a result, pumpkins are watered 5 to 10 times during the growing season. Top dressing, combined with watering, is carried out at the time of the first hilling, during the flowering of plants and at the beginning of the mass formation of the ovary.
Mineral fertilizers are used to a limited extent, alternating with organic matter. Plants show a good reaction, especially in areas with poor soils, to feeding with ash, herbal infusions and regular care of pumpkins.
Why does pumpkin rot in the garden?
The pumpkin begins to bloom 50–55 days after germination. The first on the plants to open are male flowers, which in climbing varieties make up 90% of the total, and in bush pumpkins about 50-60%.If you observe how pumpkins grow, female flowers, after pollination of which an ovary is formed, can be seen only 7-10 days later than male ones.
Since pumpkins are pollinated by various groups of insects, in unfavorable conditions, for example, in cold, rainy or windy weather, the probability of transferring pollen from a flower that lives only one day to another flower drops sharply. As a result, pollination does not occur at all, or the weakened ovary dies off along with the corolla of the flower.
In some cases, this is the reason why pumpkins rot in the garden and yield drops. The situation can be corrected by conducting artificial pollination. To do this, the petals are carefully removed from the plucked male flower and the pollen is transferred to the female flower with gentle movements. It is better to carry out such a procedure in the early morning, protecting the pollen from moisture.
Experienced gardeners note that the timely removal of wilted flowers and an unformed ovary helps to protect plants from attack by pests and the development of putrefactive bacteria that can infect already ripening fruits.
Pumpkins do not tolerate waterlogging of the soil. Therefore, the health of plants and fruits also depends on how often you water the pumpkin in the open field. It is especially dangerous if fruits that have already gained weight are lying on the cold, moisture-saturated ground on rainy days. Strong, moisture-resistant supports should be placed under such pumpkins in advance, which will not injure the bark.
Pinching a pumpkin outdoors
The reason why pumpkins rot on the beds may be excessive planting density, and on bush varieties - an abundance of ovaries that interfere with each other's development.
In order to thin the pumpkins, to ensure better penetration of air and light to all parts of the plants, as well as to stimulate the ripening of the already formed fruits, the culture must be shaped. It is not required to form bush varieties. In this case, only remove the extra ovary, leaving 3-4 fruits per plant, and make sure that wilted flowers do not cause rotting of cuttings, stems and fruits.
In the open field, pinching of climbing pumpkins is carried out in July, when there are 1-2 ovaries of 10 cm in diameter on the lashes. The lash is shortened after 4–6 leaves behind the last of the fruits. The maximum load per bush is calculated based on the characteristics of the variety and the weight of mature pumpkins. Usually, the larger the fruits, the less they should remain after the plant is pinched in the open field.
All blank, empty shoots are cut out, and only a couple of the strongest ones are left from the side ones, shortening them to 50 cm.
In order for the pumpkins to grow in size to receive additional support, together with the pinching, several internodes of the decomposed lashes are sprinkled with soil and moistened. Within 8–10 days, strong roots are formed under the soil, feeding the lash. This measure in an open place will protect the plant from the wind, and the whips and fruits from damage.
Thank you, everything is short, specific and clear.
Thanks for the info. Was helpful!