Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Pumpkins and Then Some....

Biology:

Classification:

Pumpkins are in the plant kingdom. They are an angiosperm, which is a plant that has flowers. They are in the Cucurbitaceae family, the gourd family. Gourds have a thick skin and a soft inside with lots of seeds. You know what it looks like inside a pumpkin when you cut the top off the pumpkin and pull out the insides with all the seeds and stringy stuff. The other plants in this family are cucumbers, melons, and squash. I couldn't find the class and order for pumpkins. Pumpkins are in the genus cucurbita, but there are many different species. Pumpkins are a vine. A vine is a plant that has a thin, weak stem. Their leaves look like a hand and the flowers have a little pumpkin at the bottom. They have 5 petals.

Planting:

1. Prepare the soil with compost and cow manure. Compost is rotting food. Manure is cow poop.

2. Plant the seeds in pots with the pointed side of the seed facing down. You need to do this around late February or early March.

3. Plant the seedlings outside when you see the leaves, about 10 days after planting the seeds. The seedlings need to stay warm so make a little greenhouse with plastic.

4. In about 2 months, you'll see flowers. Pumpkins have female flowers and male flowers (some plants have both male and female parts on one flower- but not pumpkins.) The female flower has a little pumpkin at the bottom, the male flower does not. The pollen from the male flower has to pollinate the female flower. You can do this by touching the stamen of the male flower to the stigma of the female flower. The stamen is in the center of the male flower and is yellow from the pollen. The stigma is in the center of the female flower and is sticky.

5. The flowers will rot away and your pumpkins will begin to get big. Fertilize them with plant food through the summer and pick the pumpkins when they are the size you want.

Pumpkins can get quite big. If you want to know more about giant pumpkins, go to How To Grow a Giant Pumpkin

I tried growing pumpkins, but mine didn't grow because we did it all wrong. I didn't rake the dirt or fertilize the soil. I just threw the pumpkin seeds on the ground. I did this at the wrong time of year in September. It was an experiment. I learned that there is a good time to plant and that soil needs to be fertilized. I hope that my seeds might still grow when the weather gets warmer.