Seeds
To grow a giant pumpkin, you need giant pumpkin seeds, which aren’t your average pumpkin variety. The type you need to get is Atlantic Giant. This is the standard type of seed used all around the world to grow a giant pumpkin. It’s botanical name is Cucurbita maxima.
Seeds drying on a sheet of plywood
Where to get seeds from?
You can get Atlantic giant seeds from a variety of sources:
Garden Centres - Most garden centres should have a packet or two of Atlantic giant pumpkin seeds, in my second year of growing I picked up a packet from The Warehouse, and managed to grow a 136kg pumpkin
Trademe - There are always seeds available on Trademe
Kings Seeds - A great company who has seeds for almost everything you can imagine, including a big variety of different type of pumpkins, a great site to check out, and order from. Minimum of a $15 order is required.
Egmont seed Company – Another NZ seed company who you can buy offline from, with no minimum order.
Other growers, locally and overseas - By sourcing seeds from another grower, you will have a more likely chance of knowing what plant your seed came from, this is important if you are trying to get the biggest pumpkin you can.
If you are getting them sent from overseas, please make sure the sender puts the botanical name Cucurbita maxima on the packaging, if MAF inspects this package and this isn’t on it, they will send you a letter, saying it is $60 to send them back to the grower, or they will be destroyed.
What the numbers mean?
If you are getting your seeds from another grower here in NZ, or from overseas like the United States, then you can do a bit of homework on the seeds, especially if you are paying for them. If you are getting some for free, you can decide on what ones to plant once you get them.
Most of these seeds will come in a packet/envelope with some words and numbers on them, and some growers even mark individual seeds so they can’t get mistaken for something else.
Here is a picture of a packet with a seed in it that I have:
And this is what it all means:
955 - This is the weight of the pumpkin the seed was removed from, remember the weight is in pounds not kilograms.
Conley - This is the surname of the person that grew the pumpkin
2004 – Unsurprisingly this is the year the pumpkin was grown
1016 Daletas – This is the female plant, that was planted to begin with
846 Calai - This is the male plant that was used to pollinate the female plant (1016 Daletas)
With the female and male plant both crossed, you ended up with the 955 Conley 2004
If it only had 1016 Daletas and not the 846 Calai mentioned, then I would assume that it had been self pollinated by itself.
Not all seeds are the same
I must point out that even seeds from the same pumpkins may all grow differently, and there is no guarantee they will perform the same as each other, this coupled with different growing locations, soil make up, and growing techniques all lead to variances to the fruit. But you have a higher probability of getting a good pumpkin, with seed from a good pumpkin.
Traits to looks for
There are all sorts of things you can look for in pumpkins, depending on what you want to achieve. Some of the ones to look out for are:
- Very heavy growing pumpkins
- Pumpkins that weighed heavier then predicted using charts, usually represented by a percentage eg. +20%
- A nice orange colour
- Ones that are prone to stem split
Your friend Google is a great help at this moment in time, you can type in the growers name and the weight of the pumpkin, if it has been mentioned somewhere it will appear in the results. You may even get to see pictures of the pumpkin it came from, or the parents.
Also don’t be afraid of asking the grower how it grew, they will be a great source of information.
In the end
In the end, I think with great seed, good soil, a lot of it still comes down to luck. Hopefully everything goes great for you, and you end up with an amazing seed, that produces amazing results.