How to plant pumpkins for high yield
This article provides detailed insights on how to plant pumpkins for high yield and the key points of pumpkin cultivation and management techniques in plant cultivation. Let's take a look together.
With the arrival of spring, it's time to plant pumpkins in open fields. Planting a few pumpkins in front of or behind the house, you can harvest them when it gets hot. Homegrown pumpkins taste sweet and sandy, and both the pumpkin tips and flowers are edible. However, some inexperienced friends may encounter problems during planting, resulting in fewer pumpkins and poor taste.
1. Pruning
When planting pumpkins in a small family courtyard, usually three or four plants are enough for the vines to cover the entire yard. When growing on the ground, there's no need for pruning, allowing it to grow freely. But in areas with heavy rainfall and high fertilizer application, pumpkins tend to grow very vigorously. In such cases, it's appropriate to剪掉 some lateral branches and yellow leaves to reduce nutrient consumption and promote flowering and fruit setting.
Additionally, there's a new planting method suitable for home gardening. If you're planting on a balcony or have a small garden area, you can adopt the vertical planting method. The vines are suspended, utilizing the upper space, increasing soil utilization, and making management and ventilation easier. Generally, two vines are retained for flowering and fruit setting.
2. Artificial Pollination
Many friends find that their pumpkins or watermelons fall off before they grow to full size. This is mainly due to a lack of pollination. Although open-field pumpkin planting can rely on insects for pollination, it often encounters rainy or cloudy weather, which can affect the success rate of pollination. Therefore, it's best to perform artificial pollination. This should be done before 10 a.m., removing the open male flowers, removing the petals, and pressing them onto the female flowers.
How to plant pumpkins for high yield
3. Watering and Fertilizing
Pumpkin roots are well-developed, with many leaves and fruits, requiring a large amount of fertilizer and having some drought resistance. If the pumpkin stem and leaves are weak, the leaves turn yellow, and the internodes are short, it's necessary to supplement water and fertilizer in time, mainly with organic fertilizers. If chemical fertilizers are used, compound fertilizers can be used. However, in actual planting, plants often grow too vigorously.
This is because many friends, when planting, overwater during the seedling stage, apply too much nitrogen fertilizer, and plant with high density, resulting in excessive vegetative growth, with dense leaves and only one or two pumpkins. When harvesting, they find that these one or two pumpkins are especially sweet because all the nutrients are concentrated there.
If you want to harvest more pumpkins that are sweet and large, you should pay attention to watering and fertilizing, controlling water and nitrogen fertilizer usage before flowering and fruit setting. Additionally, when five or six leaves have grown, check if there are any buds and remove them in time. Many farmers may not understand why this step is necessary.
Because at this time, there are fewer leaves and nutrients, and even if a pumpkin is formed, it won't grow large. It's best to leave the pumpkins when there are 14 or 15 leaves, as these pumpkins will be larger and sweeter.
When planting pumpkins in the garden, friends should pay attention to the above three aspects to grow sweet and large pumpkins.
The above is the specific content on how to plant pumpkins for high yield and the key points of pumpkin cultivation and management techniques. If it can be of help to you, remember to visit the Green Plant Enthusiast website often!