The start of any giant pumpkin growing season starts with germinating your seeds.
If all goes well, these seeds will germinate fast, grow well in a pot and handle hardening off and transplanting like a champ and be ready to grow your personal best giant pumpkin in your giant pumpkin patch.
If all goes well…
An Optimistic Start
October (this is how long ago I started writing this post) really is an awesome time for a giant pumpkin grower. We’ve been seeing what other Northern Hemisphere growers have been up to and we get to that point where we are itching to get growing and see how things go.
I’m no different. In fact this season I was probably more looking forward to it than some of the other years. This was down to me having a new job with new working hours.
I’m excited as always to see how the season will go, combined with how it will work with these new hours I work.
Not the Best Start
I’m writing this in November, after reviewing my notes I am around 7 days behind where I was last year. That in itself isn’t a super bad thing. The lack of germinating seeds is.
I’ll dive into how things are going in a bit, but first lets talk about seeds.
Pumpkin Seeds
Seeds can be a pain in the ass.
I’ve seen it multiple times. Every single individual seed could have a different property or even the ability to if they want to germinate.
A lot of this is true for any type of seed, not just giant pumpkin seeds.
This is why when the online store part of my website died I wasn’t too sad to not be selling seeds.
Lets say you have 100 seeds harvested from a giant pumpkin. They are cleaned, and dried and all look good. How many seeds do you test plant to check germination?
Some will just not germinate as they are not viable. Some might need super specific conditions to start, others might be OK when harvested but over time they may fail more.
Not being able to get them from overseas is also a pain in the ass.
My 2025 Season so Far
I have had one giant pumpkin seedling growing and to be honest it is pretty damn average looking.
I’ve tried a lot of seeds I had on hand. I had a lot of backups and it’s a bit sad to say that nothing else has germinated.
I haven’t done anything different in regards to seed starting. But maybe they require something slightly else to what I have done.
The seeds themselves seem OK, they aren’t rotting out, they aren’t empty they just aren’t germinating.
I like to think I’ve been storing them well.
Things turned even worse
That one seedling I had, well it just shriveled up and gave up on life.
Dammit.
What am I going to do now?
Drastic Times call for Drastic Measures
A grower up in Auckland told me once he doesn’t mess around with starting seeds and growing them into seedlings to transplant, he has a completely different approach.
He throws a bunch of seeds into the pumpkin patch and sees what grows, then sees what is growing in the right direction.
I never really thought that was an ideal solution…. until now.
Something Had to Grow. Right?
My thinking is if none of these giant pumpkin seeds grow after putting seeds into the tiny patch, then that’s the end of my giant season and I will just grow miniatures.
I planted 3 sets of 4 seeds from 3 different pumpkins.
Only one of the pumpkins actually germinated and all 4 seeds actually popped up. There were 2, then 24 hours later another 2 joined them.
The seedlings that grew are all from the 578kg Gilchrist. Thanks Luke for the seeds.
No Transplanting Needed
With these 4 seedlings I had to wait to see which would be the chosen one. Luckily for me it was the first one that popped out of the ground.
It’s growing in the right direction and it looks good.
I pulled the other 3 out, and all my hopes and dreams are going into this one plant. It looks like something took a bite of it the other morning, and left the bit off piece behind. So that was a bit weird.
So for now. It’s all about watering and keeping an eye on it.
The weather has been good as well which is nice.
A Rocky Start
While not growing for a competition this year and being home during the Christmas holidays I’m keen to see how this late starting season goes.
If you are growing right now, I hope it is going well for you. Let me know.
Growing giant pumpkins is a passion that I love sharing. 🎃 If you’ve found my content helpful or entertaining, why not say thanks with a coffee? ☕
It’ll fuel my next giant pumpkin adventure!
