planting winter squash

[allenlighthouse]

when do you plant winter squash and pumpkins, i live in zone 7 east coast of Delaware, pumpkins always seem to be ripe too early and wind up going bad

THANKS

 

[lesa]

Those plants will not tolerate frost- so it is best to wait until your last frost date. For me, that is the end of May. Check the seed packs for days to maturity. Since your growing season is long, figure out when you want the ripe pumpkins and subtract. Perhaps waiting till the end of June would be best..... Good luck!

 

[digitS']

There are some varieties with an especially distant days-to-maturity rating. As with most things in life, timing is everything. Since pumpkins are a warm-season plant with large seeds, they should come up well during the heat of summer.

I used to have the opposite problem: planted early, the larger pumpkins were still green when the first frost showed up. I'd put them in the garage and by Halloween -- they were still green :/!

Rock Star is supposed to be a 98 day "Howden-sized" pumpkin. It does great !

Now a Howden Biggie at 115 days would just put me back to having green pumpkins at Halloween :/.

Steve