If you’ve come to this blog post via the magic of Google, hello and welcome. This blog post won’t tell you how to grow a giant pumpkin with milk, it’s more about discussing why do people think this is a thing? And why you probably shouldn’t use milk.
Giant Pumpkins Grown With Milk?
Over the years one tip or maybe myth that I come across a lot, especially when talking to people at different events, and I think to be fair most of these people haven’t grown a pumpkin before, is you should feed your pumpkin milk.
They seem to assume that you can inject or transfuse the milk directly into the plant, and this will help you grow a really giant pumpkin.
This always baffled me somewhat, as the only time I’ve seen milk mentioned in relation to pumpkin plants is that you can water it down and use it as a spray to help control powdery mildew.
It’s a sort of DIY version of controlling this problem.
But let’s be honest here, that could get expensive and maybe smelly?
Where did the milk story come from?
Back to the real question, where did this story about injecting pumpkins with milk come from? Was it something people actually did? Was it made up by a dairy company to try and sell more of their milk?
I’m not too sure. And if you have a solid answer please let me know in the comments below, I’d love to know more about how this actually got started.
And the interesting thing is, that while a lot of people may not know how to actually grow a giant pumpkin, they really do seem to believe that this idea of tapping milk into the plant will actually help.
Does milk get brought up when growing other things? I doubt it?
I think if you were to pick something that cows make to help you grow a giant pumpkin you really need to stop looking at anything white, and would probably do better with darker content from the back end of the cow.
Of course making sure it well matured and broken down into the pumpkin patch to get the best results possible.
Finding Answers on the Internet
I went hunting on the internet to try and find examples of milk. This actually gets me thinking about another article I’ve read that makes me angry, but I digress, back to the milk.
Maybe I am looking at this all wrong? Maybe milk is the secret ingredient that only a few people know about, including random strangers who have never grown a giant before.
Milk has calcium in it, pumpkins like calcium as it allows them to uptake various nutrients. Maybe that’s where the connection is for people.
I’m sure there are a lot of articles out there about this, but here are 4 I found. They range in the way the authors are looking into this. But here is a run down of these links
- Good well rounded article, pointing out the potential benefits and the downsides to feeding with milk, and gives a guide to doing this if you want to try it.
- This sums it up quite well I think “This author does not know a single grower of giant pumpkins, who feeds milk to their plants. Rather, they use liquid, Chelated Calcium on a regular basis.”
- This site quotes some old kids book, maybe that’s where everyone hears this from. Anyways they go into the detail of how to have a wick of milk “feeding” your pumpkin.
Howflux.com
- This site(before it was broken) talks about using milk to feed your pumpkins, but instead of tapping into a vine, they cover watering the milk down and applying it to the plant, with other nutrients if required.
Conclusion To Applying Milk to a Giant Pumpkin
There really aren’t many benefits to using milk on your giant pumpkins.
There are a lot of WAAAAY better products out there to use.
Positives of Using Milk
- You have a random story to tell people
Negatives of Using Milk
- It can be expensive
- It can become smelly
- Tapping into a vine opens the plant up to disease more easily
- The nutrients applied could be negligible
In short, don’t use milk. Use an actual fertliser. Oh and stop telling people this top tip. Instead ask someone else what they use, stop spreading dumb stories.
If you’ve been wanting to grow a giant pumpkin or get out into gardening in general, there are a lot of benefits to do so. In fact science backs this up. Check out 25 incredible benefits of Gardening.
Hi! The idea of a milk-fed pumpkin comes from the Laura Ingalls Wilder novel, Farmer Boy.
Hiya, thanks for that, I’ve seen that mentioned in a couple of places on the internet 😀