Fruit vegetables
Pumpkin
Cucurbita maxima
Timings for your region
Suggested: Moderate · Explained in the glossary
Start indoorsmid April – early May
Sow outdoorsmid May – early June
Plantingmid May – early June
Harvestearly September – mid October
Practical tip
Ripe when the stalk has corked and it sounds hollow. Harvest with a bit of stalk attached or it rots in storage.
Origin & history
The giant pumpkin comes from South America, where it was brought into cultivation around 4,000 years ago; it reached Europe in the 16th century on Spanish ships. In Germany it was long regarded mainly as animal fodder — it took the Hokkaido from the 1990s onward to make it a common kitchen vegetable. The record pumpkins of the competitive weigh-offs, now over 1,000 kg, belong to the same species.
Varieties
For German gardens the Hokkaido is the safe standard: 1 to 2 kg, early to finish and with edible skin. Musk pumpkins such as butternut belong to a different species (Cucurbita moschata) and taste finer, but need markedly more heat and a long season — in a cool summer they do not ripen. Also check the growth habit: trailing types run four to five metres, bush varieties stay where you put them. Ornamental gourds are not a vegetable.
Care
Pumpkin is a hungry feeder and traditionally sits beside the compost heap; in a bed it wants a generous dose of compost in the planting hole. Water thoroughly and at the base while the fruit is swelling, and slide a board, a tile or a handful of straw under each fruit so it is not lying on wet soil. In cooler areas limit the plant to two or three fruits and cut the vine a few leaves beyond the last one — then what is already there ripens. Do not turn ripening fruit any more; the stalk snaps off easily.
What can go wrong
The commonest setback is slugs on freshly planted seedlings; large, well hardened-off plants and collecting in the evening carry them through the critical two weeks. If fruit stays small and drops off, pollination was missing — in cool weather, hand-pollinating in the morning with a male flower helps. Rotten patches on the underside of a fruit almost always come from contact with wet soil. Mildew in late summer is normal and usually too late to do damage; even so, cucurbits should not go back on the same bed year after year.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Harvest before the first frost — a pumpkin that has been frosted will not store. Then leave it somewhere warm and dry for a week or two so the skin hardens off, and only then store it cool at around 10 to 15 °C, airy and dark, and not next to apples. Hokkaido is cooked with its skin on, large culinary pumpkins are peeled; the seeds can be washed, dried and roasted.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.