Hello!

I posted this thread awhile back, but I lost the link to the thread and can no longer find it to get the info everyone gave me, so I am posting it again. I hope that's okay!

Anyway, I received seeds for Dills Atlantic Giant Pumpkins as an early birthday present. Apparently they can grow to be over 100 pounds! I am going to try to grow them in the spring. I attached a picture.





My questions are the following:

How much fertilizer and water and sun?

Should I trim the plant if it gets too big?

Anything Important I need to know concerning care?

How do I thin to one pumpkin per vine?

Any helpful tips for growing these?

Finally, if I do successfully grow 'the big one,' where on the forum should I post a picture?

Thanks!

Jared

Jared, you can find your previous posts with two clicks. Just click on your handle (your jnicholes in blue beside your profile picture) and that will take you to your personal profile page. Right at the top there you will see a link "View posts made by jnicholes". Click on that and halfway down the list is your last thread about the pumpkins where I answered your questions before.

Full sun all day. Water and fert? As much as you can get the plant to use - you may need to water it twice a day in the hottest days of summer.

You need to grow a huge, healthy plant for that plant to grow a 100lb. pumpkin. It needs all its leaves so no, there's no such thing as this plant getting "too big" so don't trim it other than removing flowers after the one pumpkin forms. The bigger the plant the bigger/better the pumpkin will be. You can grow the vines up onto a fence or something if it's taking up too much room by sprawling on the ground. The pumpkin will need to sit on the ground though, and all the leaves need room to be in the sun.

Atlantic giant or any of the biggest cultivars do best with a very large resevoir of low nitrogen fertilizer. Like, like cotton seed meal. one hundred pounds mixed into a hill is not too much. Hills need to be spaced more than 25 feet apart on all directions. I have used a 4' by 4' pallet box filled with manure for my fertilizer stash. Plant seed at the base of your compost box.

You can start three seeds on each hill, but you will remove the smaller two plants.

Expect to water 20 gallons or more per hill, every day it does not rain.

Once you have fruit set, you will need to remove all other fruits on each plant. One pumpkin per plant only.

Some folks will set a pallet with carpet on it under fruit prior to them getting too big. It is possible to break up a 400 Lb + fruit moving it.

To find your own threads or any posts you have made go to your profile page, look for "View Posts made by jnicholes; click on that and then look for "View the threads started by jnicholes or "View each individual post by jnicholes" and you will find everything.

Here are two places that you asked about the pumpkin so you can review the answers you received back then:

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

Good luck with the pumpkins!

(I still want to know what kind of fish you are holding in the avatar... but this is a plant site and not a fishing site.)

Edited to add: Sorry, I cross posted.

I watched a documentary about the growers of these huge pumpkins and learned quite a lot. My S-in-L (son-in-law) tried growing them but did not have enough sun.

There is a man named Bill Foss who lives in Buffalo, Minnesota - he sure knows how to grow the big ones - he says he's in the phone book if anyone wants to call him to talk about pumpkins. Here are two links:
http://www.quantumpetshop.com/...
http://www.quantumpetshop.com/...

@greene I think Jared's fish is a sturgeon. They're bottom feeders so maybe he will tell us how he managed to catch it.

Hello!

Well, this is a plant forum, so I wont get into much detail on my picture. All I will say is that is me holding a white sturgeon I caught three to four years ago and there is a video of me reeling it in on YouTube.

Back to the subject at hand, Thanks for all the info you gave me. I will post pictures when and if I grow one that big.

Jared