Great conversationalists are plants of the squash family. They produce fun fruit with a wide variety of shapes and colors. Easy to grow in full sun, pumpkins are grown mostly for their ornamental aspect because they are not edible.

What you need to know:

Botanical name: Citrullus colocynthis

Common name: coloquinte

Family: Cucurbitaceae

Origin: South America. Pumpkins were introduced to Europe towards the end of the 16th century.

Height: Climbing or running stems can span over 2 meters.

Foliage: Pumpkins have long stems covered with hairs that bear very cut leaves, similar to those of pumpkins but smaller.

 

Flowers: The yellow flowers of courgettes are very distinctive. They bear fruit in a wide variety of shapes and colors, but with a hard skin with little flesh inside. Most pumpkins are purely decorative. Edibles belong to the family of gourds or gourds (Lagenaria).

 

Exposure: In a sunny place, in a warm place.

 

Sole : Rich, supple and airy, well drained but still fresh.

 

Where To Plant Pumpkins?

Pumpkins need a lot of sun and heat to sprout. Below 12°C, their growth stops momentarily. To succeed in their culture it is therefore necessary to choose a sunny location if possible the warmest part of the vegetable garden.

 

The running or climbing stems of courgettes are ideal as a ground cover, for example to cover a south-facing embankment or to decorate a well-exposed pergola, fence or pergola.

 

How To Sow Pumpkins?

Sowing courgettes can be done in pots from April or directly in the ground a few weeks later, in Mayoso for squash.

 

Semis Des Colloquintes En Godet

Around mid-April, sow 1 or 2 seeds in a warm pot. Ideally, you should use buckets of peat that will decompose quickly when you transplant the seedlings into the ground about 3 weeks to a month later. This avoids slowing down the growth of the plant when it is planted.

• Store the bins in a warm and bright place: in a greenhouse, a veranda or on the inner windowsill of a bright window.
• Water regularly to keep the soil fresh, but not too much to prevent the seeds from rotting.
• Germination usually takes less than a week. Once your plants have 2 or 3 leaves, after 15 days, keep only the prettiest one from the bin, remove the other one.
• Then you can plant them back in the ground in mid-May.

Pumpkin Seed In The Soil

Sow from late April to mid-May, after the soil has warmed up.

 

• Sow 2 or 3 pumpkin seeds in pockets in holes filled with compost and spaced 1 to 2 m apart.
• After emergence, keep only the prettiest plant.

Preservation of Zucchini

Watering: Pumpkins like soil that stays cool, but not overwatered. Throughout the period of vegetation and during the formation of the fruits it is therefore necessary to water regularly, avoiding to wet the foliage to prevent the appearance of powdery mildew. Reduce the water supply when the pumpkins begin to ripen.

 

Fertilizer: Pumpkins are delicious. Before planting them, enrich the soil by providing a large amount of well-decomposed compost. Avoid adding nitrogenous materials such as grass clippings as they shorten the life of the squash.

 

Mulch: Ideally, spread a layer of straw around the legs and under the stems of the pumpkins to limit the appearance of weeds and keep the soil fresh longer.

 

Diseases: In hot and rainy weather, the leaves of courgettes can be covered with grayish spots: this is a fungus that is a pest of courgettes: powdery mildew. To prevent a rainy season, do a wet sulfur treatment.

 

Slug Attacks: Slugs and snails decimate young pumpkin and squash plants. For the first 15 days after transplanting into the ground, protect them under a cover: the plants will be safe from slugs and will benefit from the excess heat to get their growth off to a good start!

 

When to Pick Pumpkins?

the harvest of pumpkins spreads from the end of August until the first frosts in November or December, because not all the fruits on the same plant ripen at the same time.

 

Sheds know when to pick them up, press the skin with your fingers. The bark should be hard, the passage of the nail no longer marks it and the finger no longer sinks into it.

 

Cut off the stem as much as possible and handle the pumpkins with care, without hurting them.

 

Then you can put them out to dry in crates. Store them in a cool, dry and ventilated place.

 

What To Do With Pumpkins?

o pumpkins are decorative. You can use them to make basket arrangements: just avoid stacking them too much.

 

Remember to turn the fruit from time to time and monitor regularly to eliminate pumpkins that start to rot.

 

Pumpkins that have made it through February without rotting will keep until next fall!

 

Varieties of Zucchini for Cultivation

The different varieties of pumpkins are distinguished by their shapes and colors. Seed packets on the market often include a mix of varieties. Here is an overview of the most original pumpkins:

 

devil’s claw pumpkin: it is white, bicolor or striped. It has the shape of a flying saucer reminiscent of a patisserie, with more pronounced protrusions. This strange variety also goes by the names Crown of Thorns or Ten Commandments.

 

the Kutali pumpkin: it is one of the most common. It produces oblong bicolored fruits with a green, round base surmounted by a more or less curved yellow neck.

 

Scab pumpkins: Their very decorative fruits have many warts. The milky varieties are many: Orange Warts, Mayo Warty Bule, Indian Mix and others.

 

Many other pumpkins: round or pear-shaped, different colors.