My dear wife decided she wanted a garden. Great! I like fresh veggies. We have two garden "boxes" (a 4x5 foot area with a wooden border. She decided to just use the one for her first "go" at it.

Anyways, she planted the following in ONE garden. A row of Kale, a row of green beans, a row of lettuce, a row of carrots, a row of tomatoes, and a row of pumpkins... but not just any pumpkin, no, award winning 100lb+ pumpkins. Those fuckers are taking over the yard now and I assume we still have 4 months of growing them?

Anyways, my question is can I trim the vines with the flowers and leaves back? They are starting to kill the other plants (it's pretty creepy, somehow they know not to wrap around themselves, and target the other plants). Or will trimming it keep them from producing pumpkins? There's probably 6 of these massive plants

It sounds like the attack of the killer pumpkins! Save yourself!!!

Perhaps you know someone with a fast vehicle that can be used to hasten your escape???

Yes you can prune it.

Pumpkins vines grow wild if you don't.

It will put off new runners that will fruit.

You really want to prune it to maximize the fruit growth, fewer bigger pumpkins instead of more pumpkins that are runts.

Those flowers will turn in to the pumpkins, so yes, getting rid of those will get rid of the pumpkins themselves. As said by Dusty, you can prune them to maximize size, but you don't want to get rid of them all.

They should still produce fruit as long as you don't go nuts with the pruning.

http://pumpkinnook.com/howto/vines.htm


4x5? I built my GF a 4x8 garden box last year. Had one row of cucumber plants going the short direction and they nearly took over everything. Had to reroute the vines daily.

You can eat the blossoms!

The Germans and Italians stuff and fry them:


Tempura goat cheese and ricotta stuffed pumpkin blossoms
by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


Something from Nothing: Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms

Thanks everyone!

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
You can eat the blossoms!

The Germans and Italians stuff and fry them:


Tempura goat cheese and ricotta stuffed pumpkin blossoms
by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


Something from Nothing: Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms

we went to a french restaurant last weekend and I had them, wasn't a big fan and apparently they're a pain in the ass to cook properly

We fry the blossoms from yellow squash plants fresh from the garden...

my wife wanted pumpkins too, but I forbade them, but allowed acorn squash instead as I love to eat them. Well we had 6 plants I figured at least a couple would die off... No such luck. Now they're taking over. I'm waiting for them to flower so I know which ones to prune off.

On a side note I love to stuff squash blossoms and bake them. My favorite is pepperoni and mozarella with an egg wash and italian bread crumbs.

My biggest problem growing pumpkins are leaf fungus, and vine borers. Squash bugs can raise hell too. I only grew sugar pumpkins, but I imagine other varieties get these same problems too.