Squash & cucumbers
Pumpkin
Sow April; optional mid-July for Halloween.
- Outside
- Direct Apr; optional mid-Jul for Halloween
- Where
- In ground or raised bed, needs space
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Deep soak; heavier as the fruit sizes
- Harvest
- Late summer to Oct, hard rind
Care
- Water
- Deeply and about weekly, in the early morning on the soil, and heavier while the fruit is sizing; skip any week that brings half an inch of rain. Mulch deep and keep the deep-soak rhythm; the vines drink hardest in August, the month that barely rains here.
- Sow
- Direct sow in April, 2 to 3 seeds a half inch deep per hill thinned to the strongest; pie types 2 to 3 feet apart and the full-size vines the better part of ten feet to run. An optional second sowing in mid-July is the Halloween date.
- Feed
- A shovel of compost dug into the hill starts it off; feed fish and seaweed liquid every 2 weeks as the vines run, nitrogen held down so fruit sets clean. Hold all feeding through the July-August heat.
- Ready
- The rind hardens to a thumbnail and colors right through; cut with a long handle left on and never lift the fruit by it. The April sowing ripens with the fall arrivals in September and October; the mid-July sowing colors for Halloween, all ahead of the mid-November frost.
- Trouble
- Sudden wilt with frass at the stem base: squash vine borer, prevented the state sheet's way with Bt before larvae enter the stems. Once two or three fruit set per vine, pinch the growing tips so the plant finishes what it started; slide a shingle under each fruit to keep the ground side sound.
In a bag?
- No
- A full-size pumpkin vine runs ten feet and roots deep to size its fruit, and the research verdict files pumpkin with the bed crops under the 15 gallon cap. Give it open ground.
Pumpkins are a spring crop here with a Halloween option: sow in April for fall fruit, or again in mid-July to time a jack-o-lantern for October. The vines run all summer.
Growing
The county's own month lists put pumpkins in the spring sowings, and April is the working window with the warm season: one sowing runs vines through summer; the early set ripens from late summer, and September into October covers the slower set. The state table's fall row backs a second date, and the entry resolves it to mid-July for a Halloween pumpkin; those fruit color in October, ahead of the mid-November frost. Give full-size vines their ten feet and slide a shingle under each fruit.
Varieties
No named Texas pumpkin varieties appear in the sheets surveyed, so the entry stays generic rather than inventing one; a pie type and a full-size type grow on the same schedule here.
Pests
Squash vine borer is the named family trouble, controlled with Bt before larvae enter the stems. The heat gap holds flowers in July like every cucurbit here; fruit already set hangs on and sizes through it.
In the kitchen
Pie types roast and puree into freezer bags for the holidays, and the seeds toast with salt the same afternoon the jack-o-lantern gets carved.