Thanks, weirdtrev. Because it was raining heavily today I didn't want to harvest the pumpkins. When the sun finally comes out we'll take a good pair of pruning shears to them.

I'm hesitant to leave harvested pumpkins out in the open to cure since just today a critter destroyed one of them. I'm assuming more will suffer the same fate. Any ideas to allow them to cure correctly while preventing the critter buffet?

As for how we manage the garden over the summer: a family adopts the garden every week, taking care of the watering, pest control, weeding, harvesting and whatnot. We created an instruction manual that explains how to maintain the garden. This was a huge help in making sure everyone knows what to do and how to do it. From June to mid-August the adoptive families harvested about 100 lbs of produce. Not including these bad boys:

weirdtrev - your advice was spot on. The big pumpkins held up beautifully for our school event. After harvesting we wiped them down with a water & bleach solution and kept them on a towel on the floor of the school's garden shed. We raffled them off and earned some nice cash to fund our springtime activities.

Thank you so much for the information!

Weirdtrev, why do you think that the pumpkins will not last so long if the vines and leaves have died? Do you mean died prematurely? I always find winter squash that are maximully ripened and skin-hardened this way store very well. But I never grow pumpkins either.

ccieckiewicz, what variety are those "bad boys"? Is it a white pumpkin or a winter maxima? They look alot like the Crown Prince I grew this year.

tcstoehr - they're Lumina white pumpkins.