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Mr Fothergill's 17826 Vegetable Seeds, Pumpkin Atlantic Giant

£9.9£99Clearance
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In April, take a seed and gently file it along the edges so that it will be easier for it to break through when it germinates. You can start them off by placing between some damp (not wet) paper towel, or sow direct in a 5 litre pot filled with seed compost with the pointed end down. They won’t germinate well at room temperature, so place them in a warmer environment at 25-28C. Germination will take 1-4 days, at which point the temperature needs to go down to 18-20C. Then the young plant can grow on in the pot which needs to be placed somewhere sunny. After 7-10 days it will need to be transplanted to a ‘pumpkin patch’ outdoors or in a large polytunnel. The Pumpkin Patch – Preparation Aphids can be a problem solved with an application of washing up liquid water (which suffocates them). Slugs and snails can be distracted by planting nasturtiums among your pumpkin plants. Orange nasturtiums also give something of a natural camouflage to fruit – useful if you are worried about thieves stealing fruit from you. You can do this by digging in ‘well-rotted’ manure or green waste (garden compost), or by adding soil improver. Pumpkins are hungry fruits and this will add the nutrients needed, as well as providing the best soil structure - increasing your chance of monster sucess.

Sometimes a pumpkin fruit seems to set and then perhaps a week or two later you find the plant has decided to stop supporting it. I usually find this coincides with a change in the weather – a cold spell with low sunlight will do it. This occurred in 2016 ( see picture) but the plants went on to reflower and grow new sizeable pumpkins ( although I was rather worried for a while). In 2017 we had a dismal summer and I couldn’t get a single giant pumpkin fruit to last longer than 3 weeks – they would give me hope and then start weeping pumpkin juice from small holes in their surface before rotting. BigPumpkins.com congratulates Al Eaton on his 173.75 inch long gourd measured at the Bracebridge Agriculture Society Fall Fair in Bracebridge, Ontario on September 17, 2022. However, you need to pinch off ALL the female flowers, apart from one on the main vine when it appears at a minimum of 10 feet out. The female flowers usually open at sunrise just over a week after they first appear. When they do open, pollinate it as early as possible in the morning with one or more of the male flowers, either from the same plant or another Atlantic Giant. Make sure plenty of pollen is rubbed over the stamen. Then tie up the flower petals with some string to prevent water getting in, contamination, dehydration etc. My plants are always covered in plastic grow-tunnels at the outset ( to give them a temperature boost) but they did still get a little burned by that frost in 2017 and if you look carefully at the second photograph below you can see some yellowing of the leaves. The frost didn’t kill the plants but it didn’t help their health or giant pumpkin prospects. There’s really no rush to get squash in early unless you’re aiming for a 1000lbs Malvern show entry, you only take a frost risk and the outcome isn’t typically better than waiting a couple of weeks. You’ll need around 120 days to get a good pumpkin fruit to size so you could be sowing out up until early July and still get fruit for Halloween season come late October. We have been helping growers reach new personal bests since 1992! We have two World Championships and 7 Half Moon Bay Championships, and more than enough experience to help you attain your goals. We offer the highest quality products available and have distributed close to 20,000 videos to help growers do their very best.

My more modest plan was to just give a big pumpkin to my nieces for Halloween but they grew even better than I expected.

Our soils’ resources on digging clayand sandy soils can advise the best treatment for particular soil types.In the summer months my giant pumpkins become like my pets, I worry about them at night, I water them, I water them some more, they get daily attention, liquid manure feeds, their flowers get hand pollinated and the vines get ‘managed’. It’s ironic that giant pumpkins do, in my experience, offer little in taste – but I don’t grow them for anything more than the size challenge – how big will they get? Can I get them to grow bigger? Will they be the biggest in the Dorking squash and pumpkin show?!

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