pumpkin advice

[helly]

Hi,i have already plamted my pumkins and they are putting on new growth steadily. My question is i have been given some 4yr old manure, will I be ok to add this to the surrounding area of the pumpkins to help growth.
cheers H

[SarzWix]

I've moved your thread out of Growing Techniques and onto an appropriate board.

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ard_36376.html

[bluemoon]

It won't hurt, water them very well first and it will keep the moisture in. I always dig a hole far larger than needed then refill it using layers of soil and homemade compost with a sprinkling of blood, fish and bone in with the layers, adding water at intervals as it fills. Then I re-dig a hole in the middle of the correct size to take the root-ball. It works beautifully and manure could be used instead of the compost.

[cottage garden]

It is exactly what they need. The more you give them then the bigger they will grow.....

[helly]

Thanks , this week I have noticed that a few of the pumpkins have turned yellow and fallen off, what causes this?
cheers H

[bluemoon]

The biggest pumpkin vine I've ever seen was planted on a compost heap. I think that may have been a little OTT though, the vine must have measured 30 or 40 feet, the leaves were well over a foot across, but the fruits were disappointing, it seemed to put everything it had into growth rather than fruit formation.
They fall off if they haven't been pollinated for which you need a male flower (no 'baby' at the back) this often happens with the first few fruits, I wouldn't worry just yet

[chriscross1966]

How long should you wait to tell if a pumpkin fruit has set?... My family is having a competition this year using plants my sis-in-law handed round. Mine has got a fruit the size of a golfball when the flower blooms in front of it and the first one that formed has dropped the flower and is now a bit bigger than a cricket ball.... Am I safe to start taking off all the other flowers as they form? My brother managed 96 lbs last year (I didn't have the allotment at the time) and I'm determined to give him a decent race this year, but I need to restrict the plant to one fruit to do that.....

I planted it through weed mulch plastic, first I pulled the plastic back, dug a hole and poured in a couple of compost bags of fresh field-collected horse manure then puit the dirt back on mixed with half a growbag, half a pint of BFB and a couple of pints of chicken manure pellets. The mulch went back on and aI cut a hole in it and planted through. I put a 5 litre bottle upside down with a pinhole in the cap and a hole in the base next to it in case I needed it for watering. Plant seems healthy, plastic bottle disappeared into the undergrowth a couple of weeks ago ... Looking at it I think it's Atlantic Giant but it might be Hundredweight.....It's got 50 square feet (a space a bit over 5ft x 10ft) allocated to grow into and I don't care about edibility as I have at least a dozen winter squash plants of various sorts (similar technique, less manure)

Any advice on feeding it, and especially on fruit-set recognition?......

chrisc