Planting Pumpkins

Way back in the Autumn for Halloween we got our pumpkin from the Farm shop near home, opened the top and the kids and I had a very messy morning removing the seeds from it – some we toasted others we dried on the windowsill for a couple of days and then added to a little brown seed package which has sat in my box of seeds all winter until recently when we opened the seeds and started to plant our pumpkins.

There was a huge will they won’t they grow. I thought that seeds from the farm shop  were slightly more likely to grow than seeds from our super market brought one (we didn’t manage to grow any last year ourselves). Planting them we used 6 inch diameter pots and filled the with a mix of Permalite and seed compost.

The seed pots were then placed in the green house and watered regularly every evening and the children observe the growth if any of the seeds.

It’s not even a month since we planted the seeds – the weather has improved – gone are the warm coats and the pumpkin seeds are growing – we have the first set of leaves and it’s possible to see the second set of leaves coming out.

If you are growing pumpkins for the first time – you haven’t saved seeds from last year then seeds from the store are equally good to grow and likely to be more reliable than seeds from a supermarket pumpkin and you may get a huge pumpkin ready to carve come Halloween.