The Plants That Ate San Francisco!!

Well, not quite.  But it does seem like my pumpkin plants COULD take over the Bay Area if left unattended.

Ever since I paid over $30 at the grocery store for a couple carving pumpkins one year, I decided I would start growing them myself.  It's been a lot of fun trying out different varieties.  The only problem is that pumpkin plants are HUGE!!  Normally, I deal with this by growing them on an outside bed that has lots of "spillover" space, but I believe in crop rotation as a way to keep my soil fertile and relatively disease free.  That means this year, I had to grow the pumpkins in the middle.  And just as expected, they immediately wanted to take over the whole garden, crowding out everything else.

Having some experience now with pumpkins, I let the vines grow until I saw I had enough pollinated and formed pumpkins, then it was time to start cutting.

Here are my "Befores" and "Afters" where I took to the plants yesterday.  If a vine had a pumpkin on it, I cut the vine just past the squash.  Vines with no pumpkins got nixed completely.

My only caution was to not cut back so severely to shock the plant.  The leaves serve a purpose, after all, so getting rid of too much is a bad idea.

But I was able to get rid of enough to restore the paths between my beds and open up sunlight to my nearby vegetables which were probably wondering if summer would ever arrive.

I've got NINE pumpkins growing, enough for me and my kids, who I usually gift the nicest ones.

"They" (meaning Google) also say that cutting back pumpkin vines encourages the plant to focus energy on the fruit, instead of making more vines.  Honestly, they say that about tomatoes and everything else, and I'm a bit skeptical.  I have no scientific knowledge about this, I just tend to think plants will be plants, and we really can't tell them what to put their energy into.  But hey, if it's true, that's a bonus, right?

I do know that growing here near the foggy Pacific Coast, air circulation and sunlight is a must to prevent powdery mildew.  Usually every year, I fight some form of rust and mold on everything, so thinning out tomatoes and dense vines helps to burn off that morning mist.

And speaking of trimming, here are a couple of tips:

TIP 1:  Keep your pruners clean!

I keep a supply rubbing alcohol in my garden which I bring out when pruning.  It gets dirty (thus the orange hue), but I swish my clippers around in the solution frequently when cutting back plants.  This prevents any disease that might be lurking on one plant from being spread to everything else.

TIP 2:  Don't compost weeds or diseased foliage!

If you've got a compost bin, most gardeners recommend you keep it free from weeds and diseased foliage.  So when I'm cutting back plants in the yard, I keep a separate bucket for weeds or anything else not allowed in my compost bin.  The red color of my weed bucket was coincidental (the only color they had at Lowes at the time), but quite symbolic.  CAUTION:  HAZARDOUS! 😄😄😄