hanging pumpkins?

[annette]

Because my garden got off to such a late start this year I'm not going to have anything ready to harvest by Halloween. Oh well. But I had a thought/question for next year...

My vines are trailing all through my garden (and across my lawn). I'm wondering about rigging up ropes/hooks to hang them from the fenceposts beside the garden. Actually I was thinking about elastic bungee cords, that way as the vines grow and get heavier the cords will have some give to them. Has anyone tried something like this? Any thoughts on it?

[sullyvan]

I tries to save some space by training the vines up a spruce tree in my yard. They went right up to the top, so it sis save space, but the fruit weighs the vines down as the grow and eventually pull down and damage the vine. I suppose you could support each fruit with some metting or such

[pumpkinnut]

If you dont have alot of room you can cut the vines down after they get about ten feet long. After cutting the ends off just put some drit over the ends. There alot of tricks you can use to save space. If you still need more let me known

[annette]

It's not so much that they're on the grass that bothers me, it's that I'm worried about running over the vines with the lawnmower when they do make it onto the grass. And then I remembered seeing crops grown at WDW where almost all the produce was hanging down, and I thought hmmm I wonder if that would work. The pics aren't mine, just ones that I found online but... (sorry about the size of them)



You can see that they've actually got quite an eleborate system set up, with a very sturdy framework in place for the vines to grow on and then the fruit hangs down. You can also see they've got clear molds around some of them, so that as they grow they'll be forme into Mickey head shaped pumpkins. For pumpkins that are too heavy to just hang down like that on their own they support them with netting.



So I started wondering what I could do with my little garden to kind of maximize the growing space. It's about 25' x 8' and it has to handle not just the pumpkins but other things like tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, squash etc.

[Wolfy]

Wow, that's cool!! And by doing it that way, you can avoid the unsightly marred skins as the dirt gets pushed into it with the weight of the growing kin, and you also avoid the flattened aspect of a ground grown kin as well. Youre first pic won't show though.

[annette]

Ah, I see that! It was showing yesterday, hmm. Mind you I linked to it on someone else's site, so who knows what they've done with it.

This one is mine, taken a few years ago. It doesn't show the plastic mold that they put around the pumpkin to force it to grow into the Mickey head shape though. It is a real pumpkin, they're using ropes to reinforce the vines and hold it.

[Wolfy]

Hmmm... that's rather interesting.

[spyderman1289]

man, that looks pretty cool! i kinda wanna try that someday, growing a pumpkin, first off haha, shaping it like mickey, then carvin his face in it...who know

[annette]

Well I've got my pumpkin hanging frame up in the garden now, we'll see how the experiment goes this year!!

[Sariel]

Can't wait to see how this works for you.

[Wolfy]

Oh this should be fun!! I can't wait to hear and see more as the season moves on!

[itsmewendylee]

How's it going so far? My vines are starting to go gangbusters... just came in from weeding around them. I just have an old fashioned pumpkin patch, though!

[annette]

Well not going quite as well as hoped. Actually none of the garden is doing as well as hoped, but we had a lousy spring. About 2/3 of the things I started from seed died. so I've replaced the pumpkins (and other things) and they're growing now!

[annette]

Summer was rough here for pumkin growing! Vines grew nicely but there was no fruit at all for ages until recently. Here's a picure of one of the few pumpkins I've got growing so far, and the frame. Next year when I start the 'kins I'm going to have to put a stake in the pot and start them growing up right off the bat, they were too difficult to try and move without breaking the stems once they were a good size.