I'm not exactly an expert--my first year growing these, but this forum seems a bit slow and nobody has responded to your question, so here's what little I know.

I seem to recall (could be wrong) reading at some point that the plants tend to abort all but 2 or 3 fruits. If so, there's not much you can do--just let all the fruits possible grow to maturity and see what you get--it might not be a large number. If you are pruning your plant, definitely make sure you don't prune away secondary vines that would produce fruit (or cut the primary vine for that matter until you absolutely have to).

Other than not removing fruits (or potential fruits), you should probably just treat the plants as everyone describes for growing a single giant pumpkin per plant. All of these general guidelines should be the same whether one fruit or many/several. I think.

My own experience so far: my vine to first set fruit did so long before any other female flowers had matured. The fruit at this point is very respectable for this stage of growth: at 16 days it has a circumference of 44 inches (probably about 36 pounds). It appears that the plant is focusing all of its energy into that one fruit and aborting other buds/fruit, although it's been too soon to say this for sure.

I'm growing these guys with my little nephew and I have no plans to remove fruits. We're going with exactly what the vines are willing to give us. If that means one 300 lb. fruit from one plant and five 25 lb. ones from another, that's fine.

Good luck!

When you are trying to grow the biggest pumpkin you can, you limit the plant to 1 or 2 so that all the plant's energy is concentrated on those giant fruit. If you just let it grow all the fruit it sets, you will spread out the energy and should get more, but smaller, pumpkins. My vines seem to continue setting fruit up until frost, so as long as I let the vines continue to grow and bloom, they will keep setting fruit.

For the season of 2009, I ordered seeds from Howard Dill, the well known producer of these giants. I take note of the information to keep only 1 to 2 fruits per vine.
I don't know if this is true or not but I heard that the giant pumpkins were fed with milk. Is this true or is it a urban legend?? Does anyone know??

This is my first year at growing atlantic giant pumpkins. I dug up the soil in my yard, put a pile of dead leaves down, put the dug up soil on top of the leaves, put another layer of dead leaves down, then put 7 bags of cow manure and 5 bags of top soil on top of this all. I planted my seeds into this mega mound of topsoil and manure June 18th, it is now Sept 1st. I use liquid miracle grow plant food twice a week, and the largest pumpkin I have is the size of a large watermelon. The question I have is how much longer do they have to grow? At what time will the growth start slowing down?

Most fruit will continue to gain weight for between 60 and 90 days depending on plant health and vigor. Since your fruit is still relatively young it will stop putting on weight once the lows drop into the 50's. You can extend your weight gain by covering the fruit at night with a warm blanket.

I would recommend that once the season has ended, to take soil samples from the area you will be growing in next season. Once you get your results back ammend according to their recommendations, add as much organic matter as you can "4 to 6 inches preferably" and till. In the spring you will take another soil sample and make minor adjustments if necessary. Start your seeds indoors next spring around the end of april. In order for most fruit to reach their full potential most growers prefer to have a fruit pollenated by the 4th of July.

GOOD LUCK!!
Duane

I live in the south central piedmont of virginia, isn't it too early to start the pumpkins indoors at the end of april? Currently fighting the squash bugs that made there way into the pumpkin patch, damaged a potion of the plants, but I 7-dusted the patch really well and squished the bigger bugs by hand.

I live in NE Ohio. If you want to get a pumpkin over a thousand pounds an early start is a must. One of the main reasons for getting them in early is that getting a fruit to set is more difficult during the hotter weather in July. In Virginia I would imagine that your weather warms up earlier than it does here in Ohio and you may even have to get an even earlier start.
Normally I will germinate my seeds on or about the 25th of April. Plants are then transplanted into the garden within a week of germination in order not to hinder root growth. When transplanted out, the plants are kept in a makeshift hoophouse and a heater is added to keep them warm at night.

A LOT of work goes into growing a giant over a thousand pounds. Much more than I can detail here, but if you want to learn how to grow giant pumpkins or to push just about any other vegetable to it's limits I would highly recommend visiting extremevegetables.com or bigpumpkins.com.

To the original question. If your goal is to get as many large pumpkins on as possible I would set a pumpkin at the end of each secondary vine and one or two along the main. You could easily end up with several pumpkins over 200 pounds. there have been people who have done this and finished the season with 2500 pounds of pumpkins from a single plant.

i want to try this next year any tips for giant pumpkins here in the pheonix area i might have start indoors in december and plant in late january i think.....by july 4th it's in the 110's i saw online i can also start them in mid june