Another pic.

Looks like a great Pumpkin!

Wow, I planted pumpkin for the first time. The vine is beautiful but shows signs of stress, so I don't know if I'll get any pumpkin-only time will tell. Happy for you though:-)! Nice...

Thanks, by stress do you mean wilting in the sun? Water them. best to not water the leaves. You can leave a hose around them with nozzle off though. My vines are dying because they're old. You don't want to water too too much because vines can rot. I'm inclined to think that's all they really want to do sometimes. Pretty dry year here so they're snapping back. I often just water where the pumpkin is and along the vine

Thanks as well Stuffiradio...I scrolled too fast in my delirium and didn't see your post.

Nice! I finally have blossoms on my pumpkin plants! Mostly male for now but I do have one pretty female who will probably bloom in a few days. Fingers crossed for pollination! I noticed an increase in vining and blooms after I pulled a few surrounding pumpkin plants that weren't doing well. I also fertilize once a week with fish emulsion on the pumpkin plants only. Seems to be helping.

Ailidespain,

Being in zone 5a, I think you should just try to hand pollinate that female blossom when it opens to ensure pollination and not leave it to chance. You want to try and beat your first frost, so the sooner that gets pollinated the better. The bees will probably do the job, but I might be better to just take It in to your own hands at this point in this season.

howelbama, I know...I'm nervous. I can't believe how long my plants took to take off. I did plant them late though on June 6th so it makes sense that they are blooming now about 7 weeks later. I really hope to get more females soon. Even if my pumpkins don't get very big that's ok. I just want to get three for each of my kids!!
On the note of bees I have an absolute TON of bees. None of my female zukes have missed pollination, do you still think I should hand pollinate? I have never done that so don't want to mess anything up.
Here's a pic of my female...

If everything is getting pollinated well by the bees, you will probably be ok, but hand pollinating is not difficult and may happen sooner than if you leave it to the bees. That flower looks like it has a few days before it will open. There are a few ways to hand pollinate. One of the easiest is to just cut off an open male flower and tear the petals off, leaving just the stamen in the middle. Then you take that and dab the pollen around in the female blossom. Do a YouTube search in the mean time while you are waiting for that blossom to open and you should be able to find some good videos on the topic. Seeing is always the best way for me to learn something...not sure if you're the same, but describing something only goes so far for me :)

And sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread a bit. Your pumpkin is looking great! :)

TY for the info howelbama. I love instructional vids on youtube! I will check it out.

No problem or feelings in my head or heart about hijacking of a thread. I love pumpkins and pumpkin talk. Funny though i'm not fond of pumpkin pie but pumpkin seeds are really good.

Pumpkins are fussy(in my experience). The mortality rate of female flowers is very high. Maybe it's too wet or humid here? I hand pollinated my 1st female and it rotted but her sister 6 inches away is pictured above. The bees were non existent way back when.

Takes a while for the 1st one to take hole. Your pumpkin plant is young. Mine dates back to April or early May. I lost a lot of early ones to slugs. It's probably best to plant later because all a pumpkin does is sit around in April/early May.

I have other ones much younger planted with my new corn( June 26th i want to say). I'm just going to forget about them because they're so fussy. I will try to feed them today the fish food. Nothing compares to deep rich soil with lots of compost though. I used to contemplate gathering leaves, lawn clipping from people's yards but I was afraid they used herbicides or had a dog or cat. Still though if you give a pumpkin vine that light fluffy goodness they will get the new carpet feeling and love every minute of it. I'm going to look into raising fast growing aquatic plants for compost production. There are parts of my yard that only grow shade. I think what a waste when I could be growing compost.

Howelbama,
My female opened today, I was surprised as I thought she had a few more days at least! Anyway she had bees inside all morning and a male was open on another plant next to her so fingers crossed I have my first pumpkin!!

It is amazing how fast the blossoms mature in warm weather. You should be fine if you see bees and males nearby. There is TONS of pollen in the male blossoms. I bagged a male blossom this year just to see how much pollen there actually was in one before the bees had their way with it. Once in a while I would see up to 5 bees at a time in the blossoms all fighting for position....it was quite a fire drill. My CT Field pumpkin, that survived the SVB attack, has stopped growing at about 10lbs, and is about half orange now

Ya but never count your blossoms till they've hatched. I don't even call it a pumpkin until it loses a bit of that white/yellow tint. I've seen football size pumpkins just rot. I've got new pumpkins in the embryonic stage and I'm going to pretend I don't even see them. I'll just look at the leaves and make sure the vines run water like a hose(better than my 5 year old Swan guaranteed for life hose that died!)because in the worlds of pumpkins there is a high mortality rate.

Another new shot of my big pumpkin(big for me and perfect for Halloween!)

This one is another one and a sneaky one at that. She grew just over the side of my greenhouse. Her vines are under the blankets and her head is peaking out. She's got some warts which will be perfect for Halloween! I think I'll call her Witchie Poo! She's got another going on for her too, she's growing still.

Nice! I am waiting to see if my female is going to survive. When is it safe to tell?
In the meantime my vines are getting crazy. Contemplating where to train them to grow. I am thinking along the fence of my backyard as they are already sneaking out of the garden fence.

Thanks!

got to be real gentle with pumpkin vines. I tend to be heavy handed with them. Although the one going over the edge was handled successfully. They've got like the consistency of celery but only weaker. So be careful.

If they're up in the air try to get them to come to the ground because the largest pumpkins need the vine and especially where the fruit forms to sink a tap root in order to maximize growth.

I don't trust pumpkins in the embryonic stage until they start to show some signs they are aging as well as growing. When they age they lose the light color a bit. Depends on the kind but I have a graveyard full of pumpkin splatter that didn't make it. With Pumpkins I love surprises so I try not to jinx them by caring too much for small ones. I used to cut the ends off now I just add more fertilizer once they take hold. They need all those leaves to gather enough sunlight to for fruit and deep roots to get their nutrients.

Hey my fellow pumpkin growers,
I just wanted to post a pic of the pumpkin that I am hoping will continue to grow for Halloween. The flower opened four days ago and the fruit is this big already. Do you think she's going to make it?

Don't know, last year I tried planting Pumpkins outside, and they didn't germinate. This year I started inside, and it has two pumpkins not pollinated yet. I hope to get something from mine. It will be a surprise because nature is in control.

Oh and ps my variety is big max so they stay yellowish/whitish until they ripen.

I have two pumpkins picked so far, and two more softball-size on the vine. I've had a number of little ones like Aili's above which have withered and died. Hope yours makes it, Aili. The pumpkins pictured here are so beautiful.

Yeah I agree at that stage you can't get your hopes too high. I just watched a couple of cantaloupe size pumpkins turn into mush. I have a yellow vollyball-basketball size one that is developing a shine(I'm assuming protective coat) but I don't trust the variety until it turns a little orange. I have one in the Green house(think i'll call fema after the rains yesterday collapsed her! lol)that keeps on growing. She is now my largest or tallest but I think the heaviest as well. I don't think she's completely done but i may be done with these pumpkins so i can clean up my green house and work the soil and plant some fall crops. Pity I didn't have enough money for a steel greenhouse/14 gauge tubing. My pumpkins started in the green house and the one's that flourished outside it were right next to it so they received thermal warmth from the green house. My green house is too small for pumpkins to be housed completely but I'd certainly recommend the idea of a long tall green house to grow corn and beans and let pumpkins roam the lanes. Corn need support though but it sure does grow fast in a greenhouse. If you can get it to not bend in half it'll grow 12 feet tall. The beans will love that and the pumpkins have a mind of their own so they wont care much. If you try this watch your pumpkins they like to jump up in the lap of the corn and take it right down with or without fruit. I just think it would be interesting even without the corn and the beans to see an Atlantic Giant grow in a green house which was enriched with compost. Only problem with pumpkins in a green house is weeds. You really need to have that totally under control because pumpkins need to pin them selves to the soil because they are such heavy feeders.

I wonder what causes them to die at that size. Any thoughts on improving your chances of success? My pumpkin is now softball size. Fingers crossed she continues to grow. Two more females opened yesterday and I am pretty sure they were pollinated with all of the males open and plenty of bees inside.

I don't know the answer to that. I've watched enough form this year to know if it's going to happen it's going to happen pretty quickly. There isn't going to be much doubt if it takes hold. It's not going to wait forever. It's just going to form and grow rapidly. I think water plays a role. Pumpkins need water but too much can rot the entire thing. That's what happened to me last year. So lots of sun and air are important. They're kind of like tomatoes in that regard. The best tomatoes I grow are the ones I starve of water. Too much gives them blossom end rot every time. I suppose that's exactly what's happening with pumpkins that don't make it. Yesterday the place was drenched and i lost another one.

Drenched from what? Rain? Sorry I have so many questions! LOL!

Oh yeah sorry it poured here yesterday. I should have ran out got a 6 pack of beer or something and stood in the green house and prevented the rain from crushing things. Think dry when it comes to pumpkins and most of the time it's completely out of your hands.

Ahhh okay. We haven't had jack for rain here so I think I'm good in that dept. I water at the base of the plants too. I know you mentioned the pumpkin puts a "straw" in the ground to nourish closer to the fruit but I haven't noticed one yet. When I do I will water at that spot as well. :)

Yeah if you were to pull the vine up you'd find it has rooted to the ground. Straw=root. If a pumpkin has enough nutrients at the base or beginning of the pumpkin it can get away with it if it happens to be up in the air. That's what happened to the one in my green house. Most of the vine was up in the air climbing over corn stalks for light.

It is pictured in this post. I now have to decide whether I ax it now because it doesn't seem to be growing anymore and I could use the garden space.

Oh btw don't tug on your pumpkin vine once it's rooted. You see this pumpkin never got to root near the fruit. The scale will be the final test but i'm thinking it's going to turn out to be my heaviest.

yes...now that I have the vine trained where I want it to grow I won't be moving it anymore. Here is the latest photo.

Still in that iffy state. I found two pumpkins after they became basketballs. That's the way I like to grow pumpkins because everytime I look at a pumpkin embryo they often rot. It's not that i'm jinxing them it's just their mortality rate is so high. I'd rather be surprised. I think I'll always try to grow as many as possible. That way for all the pumpkin deaths I'll come away with a couple nice ones for Halloween. I also think planting early is not such a bad idea if you live in a climate like I do(SE MA). August often turns wet. That can spell doom for Pumpkins. Almost all my pumpkins are early and 4 are basically done. I got one youngster still growing. I could harvest 3 right now and be satisfied. As nice as pumpkin patch would look in October(although in truth here it would look like a bunch of dying leaves with powdery mildew)I'd rather get my pumpkins sooner rather than run the risk August is exceedingly wet and none of my pumpkins take hold.

Pumpkin growers beware...i'm in the NE. One guy gets bit by a mosquito in another state and the local health board is begging for spraying. If you don't know mosquito spraying kills bees. several weeks ago I noticed the bee population significantly reduced after the spraying in neighboring towns. The 1st pumpkin in this thread was the one after the one i tried pollinating myself. Bees play an important role in pumpkin production. The sick sad part is so many people are so for spraying the area with a synthetic compound made by Hartz they no longer use for animals because of so many pet deaths. Honey bees in particular are under attack do to paranoia and government officials trying to look like heroes. They spray your community and it will look like a ghost town when your next Pumpkin female flower opens.