Once you have your location for growing giant pumpkins sorted it is now time to sort out your soil.
Soil can be a huge subject, with whole books written on the subject, I’ve mentioned in a post about a good book that covers the importance of soil, and how to use the natural ability of soil to help you.
While I will cover a small part of the basics here, if you want to learn more, I’d suggest getting the book and going from there.
How important is soil?
As with anything grown in the ground, the better the condition of the soil, the better the thing in the ground will grow, it’s a very simple concept, and one that a lot of people seem to not realise.
One teaspoon of soil can have over 1 million microbes and bacteria all contained within it. It is a huge living mass that has the ability of helping you immensely.
Knowing what is in your soil
To really know how good your soil is, you really need to get a soil test done, while this is a common occurrence in other parts of the world, only the most dedicated growers here would get to that point, the two reason why you might not go to these lengths, it the cost of getting it done, and the understanding of the results.
Even if you did pay the money for the test, fixing the soil to the correct limits could take even more money and more importantly time.
What to look out for instead
Before tests on soils could be taken out, most gardeners would know if other plants were growing well in the soil nearby, it doesn’t take a scientist to figure that out.
Check the soil, dig some of it up, are their worms? Other bugs you can see with the naked eye? if so, that is a good sign, it means that the food soil web must be working, there is life in your soil, and will probably be good for your plants.
PH Level
The PH level is the acidity of the soil, and having this at the correct level is important for growing anything, including giant pumpkins. It is easy to test, and you are aiming for a PH of around 6.5 – 7.
I’ve covered PH testing in a video I made last year, which can be seen HERE.
If your results aren’t good you can take measures to correct the PH levels, the normal ways are using sulpher to lower the PH level, and Lime will increase the PH level. These two fixes might take up to a year to correct, and they may cause damage to the food soil web.
Learning more about the food soil web and what you can do, will give you a better idea of how to fix this more naturally.
Soil Temp
Before updating this page, I had a section on the soil temperature, while it is still important, it’s not AS important as healthy soil. You of course won’t be planting until all the frosts have gone, and providing some shelter for your seedlings will be of great help, but all of this will be covered in a different How To section.
Reduce the amount of digging
When you read up on this new organic way of gardening, a lot of books mention no tilling, which basically means no digging, or limit the amount of soil disturbance as much as you can.
The soil has a whole network of things going on, very fine pathways for all the organisms contained within it, built up over time, once you start digging, you damage all of this, taking the soil back to square one. So the less you can dig, the better.
Compost, compost, compost
Compost is the best thing to add to your pumpkin patch, a good mixture of green material and brown material is the way to go. Once all this has been combined, the microbes go to work and break it down. If you have made compost before, you will know how hot it can get, the heat is the microbes and bacteria working at breaking it down. You can have a good compost within a short period.
Spreading it all over your patch, is where the plant is eventually going to get a lot of nutrients from, it’s easy, free, and allows the soil to work properly, and not strip out nutrients by using man made fertilisers like in the past.
You can use mulch, but it is just bigger pieces which will take longer to break down and release the nutrients.
Manure
Some people use manure like it is going out of fashion, some only use it a few times a year, and other organic type growers wont go near it, depending on where it is from will give you the answer. Manure from some animals, may contain, or be contaminated from an outside source by the use of fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, and antibodies all associated with farming.
All these things may kill off microoganisms, the things that you want to keep and have working in your garden. So if you can source it from a reliable place, and be confident that it is “clean” manure, use it. If not, err on the side of caution, and maybe leave it out. If you are to use it, place it straight onto the patch without digging in, and remember not to use it in the making of compost, you could end up with some nasty bacteria that you don’t want.