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Cologne / Germany

From the experience of you growers producing the "bigger ones", what area in sqft will a fruit in the 1000 lbs range need?
I´m asking because pumpkins usually overgrow the stuff you put under them so it might be better to choose the material just big enough from the beginning...well just in case...

10/14/2005 6:27:07 AM

Utah

I've never grown a 1000 lb fruit but i'd say 125 cm x 125 cm (4 ft x 4 ft)

10/14/2005 8:57:57 AM

Pembroke, New Hampshire

Try a nice fine sand around the base. You can keep adding it as the pumpkin grows and it will will form a nice barrier that will be clean and cool, and effectively drain water away. You won't have to keep adding strips of something if the pumpkin grows larger than you had anticipated.

10/14/2005 9:45:30 AM

Halifax, Nova Scotia

I used sand this year and ended up with a split pumpkin. My advice, if you use sand, don't cheap out like I did, load it up at least a few inches deep and keep adding to it as the pumpkin grows. I should add, although my pumpkin split, it didn't have any rot or moisture problems. I will use sand again next year.

10/14/2005 10:00:01 AM

Menomonie, WI ([email protected])

In our neck of the woods we have to use the millwire fabric. Otherwise come pumpkin picking time. Your pumpkin has become the home to 12 field mice or worse yet a stinking rat. They are living it up like they have won a free stay at The Ritz for the winter. Then to make matters worse they clean the seeds out of the pumpkin. 4x4 with Rat poison in a tube.

10/14/2005 10:00:42 AM

Cologne / Germany

I used wooden pallets again with styrofoam on top. I´m using this method the second year now when everything else under the pumpkins in the years before was visited and tunneled by critters.
It´s a 30 sec. job to move a pallet under a pumpkin with 2 persons as long as the fruit is below 60 lbs or so depending on what you can lift.
You run into problems by the time the fruit will overgrow a pallet being too small. So if 4 ft x 4 ft sounds okay, I´ll make my own pallets next time about that size.

10/14/2005 10:24:51 AM

Follansbee, Wv

To make sure my 1095 would fit in a Dodge Dakota, I stuck straight sticks into the ground at the widest points and measured between them. The pumpkin was 4'-8" wide and 4'-4" long from stem to blossom. The actual contact surface with the ground was just under 4x4 feet.

10/14/2005 2:48:59 PM