I'm in Maine, and I plant them at the beginning of June. I've noticed that most pumpkins take about 2 months to go from blossom to ripe. If you're worried about them ripening too early, pick off all of the buds until August. This has the added benefit of encouraging new leaf growth. The more leaves, the bigger the pumpkin. Also, the buds are edible and taste really good dipped in batter and fried.

When we lived in NJ we planted pumpkins around June 15 and they were ready in plenty of time before frost.

George

Hi.... this maybe a silly question, but what do you mean by the buds? Is that like pinching off the weakest pumpkins so that a few strong one will grow bigger?

I think someguyinmaine was talking about flower buds-- if you want to prevent pumpkins from forming, pinch off all the flowers before they turn into pumpkins. Pumpkins will form behind the female flowers.

Pumpkin blossoms are supposed to good to eat. We always start to sell pumpkins in late Sept/early Oct. I also tell my customers NOT to cut them until a week before Halloween, or where they want to end their display.

Old-timers say plant the seeds by July 4th, but that might be for storage pumpkins.

I planted mine on May 24th. As of tonight my longest vine is at 11 feet and i have 9 female flowers, one that should open up tommorrow morning. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have a pumpkin growing tommorrow.

Cool!

I hope you get good fruit set.

well first one didn't take but i now have 4 pumpkins growing first one was pollinated on friday the 17th. it has since grown to almost baseball size. the others were pollinated on 9/18 and 2 on 9/19