What to Do With a Pumpkin Plant in August: 5 Key Tasks
Pumpkins are well on their way in August. The fruits are developing and are around 6-8 weeks away from being ready for picking. At this time of year, some key tasks help keep plants healthy and ensure pumpkins mature as well as possible.
Any gardener growing pumpkins will undoubtedly notice plants growing quickly in late summer. It makes watering and regular feeding crucial this month. For quality pumpkins to pick, it also pays to focus the plant’s energy and raise the fruit to stop it from rotting – a devastating sight for any pumpkin grower.
The focus this month is encouraging the healthy development of what you’ve got, and a liquid pumpkin food like this one on Amazon is a key tool for helping fruits develop and ripen. What you do not want to do is encourage a mass of vines and new fruits. For a great end to the season, these five tasks ensure your pumpkins swell and are ready to pick before the frosts.
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1. Water Deeply in Hot Weather
(Image credit: Getty/Maxim Chuvashov)
There is no denying that pumpkins need a lot of moisture. Straight from planting pumpkins, they need around an inch of water a week to get off to a good start. Once the fruits start developing, that need doubles. Combine that thirst with the regular loss of moisture during a hot summer – it means you need to water plants in hot weather very often indeed.
The issue is that pumpkins have shallow roots. If you let the soil dry out and the plants get stressed, it affects the fruits, and you get small or misshapen pumpkins – which is not ideal – and also increases the risk of powdery mildew (more about that later).
To water pumpkins in hot weather, over the years I have started planting a pot in the soil next to the plant. The nifty trick is that you fill that pot with water and it sinks directly to the root zone where the plant needs it. This technique also ensures you are watering at soil level, not soaking the foliage, which is another factor often causing plants to succumb to powdery mildew.
Whether you use that method or not, the take-home point here is that pumpkins do best with regular deep watering that sees the moisture soak down into the soil, and not a light sprinkle from overhead.
If you can get out in the morning, it is the best time to water your garden, as it gives plants hours to rehydrate before the warmest part of the day and also allows the foliage to dry if some moisture is splashed onto the leaves.
Check the moisture levels a few inches under the surface (a soil moisture meter, available at Amazon, is a valuable resource for this) and water the plants deeply when it feels dry. It can mean daily watering to keep the soil moist in summer, especially if you are growing pumpkins in pots.
2. Feed Regularly
(Image credit: Getty Images/Trudie Davidson)
As well as being thirsty, pumpkins are hungry feeders. It pays to fertilize them regularly throughout the season, especially if you have aspirations of growing a giant pumpkin or your plants are in containers.
At this final stage of the campaign, there are still opportunities to fertilize pumpkins with a high-phosphorus and potassium feed to keep the fruit developing at pace. Those two nutrients help the fruits to swell in size and build strong walls.
Use a liquid fertilizer, such as this fruit and bloom booster at Walmart, and feed plants every week or two. A tomato feed makes a good alternative fertilizer, as do comfrey fertilizer or nettle teas.
Avoid high-nitrogen fertilizers that encourage soft growth and prevent the pumpkin skin from curing properly.
There may be time for another couple of feeds to give plants a quick dose of nutrients for the last stretch. But you should stop giving pumpkins any extra fertilizer around four weeks before picking the fruits.
3. Remove Excess Fruits
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As late summer is the time to focus on what you’ve got, it is beneficial to assess your plants and pick a select number of fruits to concentrate on.
While it may look great to have sprawling vines and lots of pumpkins all over the patch, the plant is unlikely to have the time and resources to ripen all of them. Once your plant has a good number of healthy fruits developing, it is better to prune the pumpkin vines and remove smaller fruits.
If you want to grow a show-stopping large pumpkin, this can go as far as leaving just one fruit per vine. For any growers not harboring aspirations of monster pumpkins, removing smaller fruits and focusing the energy on a selected 2-3 fruits per vine guarantees these chosen ones will still develop to an impressive size and ripen in time.
It also helps to cut off the tip of the vine around 2-3 feet past the last pumpkin (use a pair of clean, sharp pruning tools like these bypass pruning shears at Burpee), which focuses the plant’s energy into the fruits rather than growing more stem and foliage.
4. Raise Good Pumpkins
(Image credit: Getty Images/Catherine Falls Commercial)
Once you’ve selected the best pumpkins to keep, do whatever you can to protect them. You don’t want to spend all this time growing them, only for them not to come to fruition (pun intended).
It is good practice to raise the fruits off the soil to stop the pumpkins from rotting. This can be done by placing the chosen pumpkins on tiles, bricks, or wooden boards.
Raising them off the soil reduces the risk of the fruits decaying by sitting on damp ground for long periods of time. It also lifts them away from ground-level pests that can nibble on the fruits.
Some growers also like to gently turn their pumpkins over the summer months to get good sun exposure across the entire fruit. But this has risks of damaging the stem as you move the fruit – so it needs to be done extremely carefully.
To ensure your pumpkins get the maximum amount of sun to ripen, an easier and less risky task is to snip off any leaves that may be blocking sunlight from getting to the fruits.
5. Cut Off Diseased Leaves
(Image credit: Getty Images/Toni Jardon)
I mentioned powdery mildew a couple of times earlier. It routinely affects the crop, causing pumpkin leaves to turn white. The discoloration is due to the foliage being covered in white, powdery mold. Powdery mildew affects photosynthesis and can spread quickly across the plant.
You’ll first see the distinguishable white leaves, then pumpkin leaves turning yellow as they die back. If enough of the plant is infected, it can affect the ripening of the fruits.
Powdery mildew is commonly caused by overhead watering, but the spores do travel far and wide. They prosper in hot, humid weather conditions, and often target plants stressed by a lack of moisture. Keep your plants well-hydrated in summer, and be careful to water the soil rather than the leaves.
If you see the signs of powdery mildew, remove any infected leaves so the mold doesn’t spread across the plant. When your plants are battling a serious infection, you can get a fungicide spray like this at Walmart to apply to the plants. Just make sure any product is suitable for edible plants, as this one is.
Alternatively, there are homemade sprays you can use to battle powdery mildew. That includes a milk spray to stop powdery mildew, made by mixing one part milk to nine parts water in a spray bottle (get a sprayer at Amazon) and applying it onto affected plants.
What to Shop
A stylish watering can made of rust-proof, heavy-gauge galvanized steel capable of containing up to two gallons of water.
A compact set of pruning shears with high-carbon steel blades that gardeners can use for pruning pumpkin vines, removing diseased leaves, or picking fruits.
A foliar liquid fertilizer to mix with water and use to feed pumpkins every two weeks. It feeds through the roots and the leaves.
An important part of growing the crop is knowing when to pick a pumpkin off the vine. There are a few telltale signs that a pumpkin is ready to harvest. They include the fruit being bright orange in color, the skin being firm, the stem that attaches it to the vine being dry, and the pumpkin having a hollow sound when tapped.
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