Pumpkins and clueless - Please help

[ned1]

it appears that last fall my kids must have taken rotting pumpkins and dumped them in the garden. I now have tons of pumpkin vines and many albino and orange pumpkins coming out. What on earth do I do? Leave them on the vine until October? How will I know when to pick them, what's up? I've never done pumpkins before and this is confusing me.

It might help to know that I live in Maryland, in zone 6, if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance for your advice

Nancy

[thinkerlady[$]]

Somehow, try to keep them off the ground. My brother has pumpkins, and they always rot because he can't seem to keep them off the ground!!! Too much moisture.

They don't ripen until the fall.

[hadassahchana[$]]

If you can find some hay or straw, tuck that under the pumpkins when they're a bit bigger. Gently roll them a bit to one side and tuck hay under, then roll them in the opposite direction and tuck from that side, too. If you want big pumkins, then remove all but two or three per vine. If you decide to do this, remove the smallest ones.

I don't reduce the number of fruits, as I don't grow them for Halloween, but for food. I just fertilize mine really heavily with compost and an organic fertilizer(fish and seaweed emulsion) and leave all the pumkins on, because I freeze the cooked pumpkin for pumkin cake and pies. The pumpkins all get to be a reasonable size, but we have long, warm falls. I don't put them on straw unless we start getting a lot of rain - unfortunately, that isn't much of a problem in this dry summer.


Cindy

[emeleel]

Don't forget to make pumpkin pie!

[magenta321]

LOL.

Is that for the mathmatician, or the sorority girl?