Do you grow a vertical garden? I have used trellises, poles and fences to grow vegetables vertically, primarily tomatoes and pole beans, but last year I wanted to try my hand at growing pumpkins vertically on my garden fence. I have a small garden, 16x16 feet, so I thought it might be a challenge, and it was. But to my delight, it actually worked!
I selected sugar pie pumpkin seeds for planting as the pumpkins would be smaller and not as heavy. My
Kitchen Garden is enclosed with a
Potting Shed on one side and fencing on each of the other three sides. I planted a seed in each of the three garden beds along the fencing. As the plants grew, I directed them toward the fencing. In one of the beds, the plant was right next to it, and that one naturally climbed the fence with it's curling tendrils finding and clinging to it.
The other two plants had tomatoes planted behind them, so I had to give them something to grab onto to guide them toward the fencing. I laid a section of the 2x4 inch fencing on the ground to give it a pathway. My garden beds are only 3x8 feet, so I had my doubts that this would work.
Before long, I had vines growing on all three fences. Sugar pie pumpkin vines can grow to about eight feet long, but like all pumpkin plants, they sprout secondary vines. With such limited space, I had to trim off many of the secondary vines, so the main vines grew longer than normal.
Pumpkin plants produce male and females blossoms. The male blossoms develop a couple of weeks earlier than the female blossoms, and the plants produced more male than female. The female flowers are what produces the fruit. It is easy to tell the difference between them. The male blossom has a long, narrow stem, whereas the female blossom has a short, thick stem and a swelling at the end of it that will become the fruit. (You can see the vine's tendrils clinging to the fencing in these photos.)
The male flower has a rod-like stamen in the center that produces pollen, whereas the female flower has a stigma in the center that looks like a lobed ball. The flowers only last for about a day, and then they drop off. Pollination has to take place or the fruit will not develop. The flowers are pollinated when bees move from flower to flower and transfer the pollen. I did not notice any bees flitting about in my garden, and the flowers kept dropping. That is why it is so sad that we've had a dwindling bee population in the last several years.
You can tell whether or not the fruit is developing, because if it's not the "egg" will deteriorate and fall off. The red arrows in this photo show where the undeveloped fruit fell off the stem. I visited my garden each morning when the flowers were open, and I would cut off a male stem and gently remove the petals from the flower. I used the stem with the attached stamen like a paint brush and touch it to the stigma in the female flowers, thus manually pollinating the flowers. I was thankful when a few weeks later I saw many bees buzzing around the plants.
Before long, there were pumpkins growing all along the vines. I continued to trim the secondary vines. One of the challenges was keeping the vine's tendrils from latching onto the tomato plants growing close by. When they did, I had to clip the tendrils so they wouldn't strangle the tomato plants.
Because I was reducing the number and length of the vines, more of the plants' energy went into the fruit itself, and they were growing larger than expected, so I used twine to tie the vine to the fencing near the pumpkins to help support the weight.
Everything was going along beautifully until late in the summer when powdery mildew appeared on the leaves and vines. I read this is a common disease on pumpkin plants caused by fungi. I didn't do anything to treat it other than to cut off the badly effected leaves. Eventually the vines were weakened, and I had to cut off the pumpkins before they were fully ripe so they wouldn't fall away from their stems. Setting them in the sun, they continued to ripen to an orange color. After all the work and photographing I did all summer, I can't believe I forgot to take a photo of the full produce. In all, I successfully grew 15 pumpkins.
It was a fun experiment, but would I do it again? No. In a larger area with no other plants crowding, it would be better, but in an area as small as my garden, it was a lot of work every day to monitor the vines. I did discover, however, that it is possible to grow pumpkins vertically. My twelve grandchildren enjoyed watching them develop, and I had a nice little homegrown pumpkin to give to each of them.
I don't want to leave you with a photo of the withering vine, so here are a few more photos of my vertical garden.
And here are a few links to learn more about vertical gardening:
Square Foot and Vertical Gardening
Vertical Vegetable Gardening
5 Great Reasons to Grow Vegetables Vertically
Other Devotions by Katie:
Pea Gravel
Red Sky at Night
Before long, there were pumpkins growing all along the vines. I continued to trim the secondary vines. One of the challenges was keeping the vine's tendrils from latching onto the tomato plants growing close by. When they did, I had to clip the tendrils so they wouldn't strangle the tomato plants.
