Luremaker
Veteran Member
I have always enjoyed planting pumpkins. This year I planted about 4000-5000 plants on 1 acre. This is a new garden plot for this summer, last summer I had cattle on it. My soil has very good drainage so no hills are required. Here are the steps I followed.
1. Last September I tilled several times and removed rocks and more rocks. Some of the rocks I found were huge. This took about 7 afternoons over three weeks.
2. Planted about 80lbs of winter rye last October.
3. May 22, tilled under the winter rye. Picked a few buckets of stones.
4. May 23, spread 165 lbs of 19-19-19 fertilizer.
5. May 24, tilled in fertilizer. Picked more stones.
6. June 1, spread and tilled in 110 lbs of 11-55-0 fertilizer. Picked more stones.
7. June 3 after heavy rain planted between 4000-5000 pumpkin seeds in rows spaced 5 feet apart every foot of so. These will be thinned to about 1900 plants in a week or so.
8. Using my garden tractor with a 40 inch wide water filled roller, I rolled each row so the seeds had good soil contact.
9. Just before the vines begin to spread I will top dress with 46-00-00.
Here's how I planted my seed in one day with a little help from my wife and 2 sons.
We planted the first 10 rows by hand using what I call a planting pipe. My planting pipe is old 3/4" dia pipe about 4' long cut to a 45 degree angle on the soil contact end. We planted three seeds every 3 feet apart in each row by pushing the pipe an inch or so into the soil and dropped a seed down the pipe. Beats bending over for each seed. Works very well on tilled soil. This works great for precision seed dropping but is slow going.
We figured there must be an easier way to plant the seed. My wife has what is called a precision planter with a number of different seed plates. We decided to try seed plates until we found one which worked with our pumpkin seeds. Sure enough we found one plate which almost worked. It would drop a seed every 3rd or 4th hole in the seed plate.
So we proceeded to plant the remaining rows with the precision planter in less than 2 hours.
It has been about 10 days since we planted and the germination is excellent. The spacing on the hand planted rows is every 3 feet and the spacing on the planter planted rows varies from 6" to about 2 feet. Nothing a little thinning can't take care of.
I have attached a few photos of the creation of my pumpkin patch and will also later post pictures of the planting process.
1. Last September I tilled several times and removed rocks and more rocks. Some of the rocks I found were huge. This took about 7 afternoons over three weeks.
2. Planted about 80lbs of winter rye last October.
3. May 22, tilled under the winter rye. Picked a few buckets of stones.
4. May 23, spread 165 lbs of 19-19-19 fertilizer.
5. May 24, tilled in fertilizer. Picked more stones.
6. June 1, spread and tilled in 110 lbs of 11-55-0 fertilizer. Picked more stones.
7. June 3 after heavy rain planted between 4000-5000 pumpkin seeds in rows spaced 5 feet apart every foot of so. These will be thinned to about 1900 plants in a week or so.
8. Using my garden tractor with a 40 inch wide water filled roller, I rolled each row so the seeds had good soil contact.
9. Just before the vines begin to spread I will top dress with 46-00-00.
Here's how I planted my seed in one day with a little help from my wife and 2 sons.
We planted the first 10 rows by hand using what I call a planting pipe. My planting pipe is old 3/4" dia pipe about 4' long cut to a 45 degree angle on the soil contact end. We planted three seeds every 3 feet apart in each row by pushing the pipe an inch or so into the soil and dropped a seed down the pipe. Beats bending over for each seed. Works very well on tilled soil. This works great for precision seed dropping but is slow going.
We figured there must be an easier way to plant the seed. My wife has what is called a precision planter with a number of different seed plates. We decided to try seed plates until we found one which worked with our pumpkin seeds. Sure enough we found one plate which almost worked. It would drop a seed every 3rd or 4th hole in the seed plate.
So we proceeded to plant the remaining rows with the precision planter in less than 2 hours.
It has been about 10 days since we planted and the germination is excellent. The spacing on the hand planted rows is every 3 feet and the spacing on the planter planted rows varies from 6" to about 2 feet. Nothing a little thinning can't take care of.
I have attached a few photos of the creation of my pumpkin patch and will also later post pictures of the planting process.
It does seem to be quite a job to hand plant a whole acre, but with your well-prepared soil, I'm sure that was just a nice "walk in the park."
