I'm growing howden pumpkins, this is my second year trying this. Last year I tried growing giant pumpkins on a whim and didn't do very well. My thought is this, since you're not growing giants, why not try to grow as many as your plants will produce. That's the way I'm going this year, if I see a feamle flower that's ready and there's a male that's ready I'm going to pollinate them and see what happens.

I have pretty much decided to do exactly that. I now have four on one plant, and two or three on the other two. I will just keep feeding, watering, and pruning and in the end if I get at least 1 pumpkin I will be happy. The largest is about the size of a cantaloupe now.

my first one is bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a baseball just pollinated on friday morning. i now have 3 others going with 4 more female flowers that will be ready this week.

How are your pumpkins coming along?

Funny you should ask, So I read before I planted pumpkins that in Seattle, you have to start as early as possible because they take forever to grow and ripen. I started from seed in may and put them outside in early June. Hand pollinated everything because the bees just weren't showing up. Then we have had an amazing spring/summer and now, I have two orange pumpkins both a little bigger than basketballs and many more speeding along. I guess I will make some pie or bread with these first ripe ones cause I doubt they will last for 3 months in storage.

I have about 7 more that are smaller and the vines are still setting fruit. Though most of the new ones get aborted as there are already pumpkins on the same vine. Seems to be that each vine will not support more than one.

How are yours coming along? My neighbor is growing Cinderella pumpkins. Very cool shape. Hers are far along as well.

Mine are doing pretty good. I've got 5 growing right now. We've had alot of rain and I'm treating for powdery mildew, but other than that they are doing good, i had another that got pollinated yesterday. Now that I have good fruit set, I'm going to start nipping off flowers to get as much energy as I can going into the pumpkins.

What are you using to treat the powdery mildew? We had some higher humidity and cool weather the last week and I have noticed some powdery mildew on a handful of leaves. Its just spots right now but seems to be spreading.

Do you snip off the male flowers as well? I have been pinching the females but leaving the males for the bees to enjoy.

i've been snipping off all the flowers, and i've nipped the end of all my vines. I'll have to look at the bottle of fungicide i'm using. I'll let you know. make sure you treat it it spreads really fast once it gets going.

I have 2 pumpkins on my plant. Although many have started but have unsuccessfully polinated. I was also doing hand pollination. I think it's because we had tons of rain that really put it hard on our vine. I planted a few pumpkin plants but only kept one that was doing well after all the rain.
My first pumpkin is already bright orange and is basketball size. The 2nd one just started to grow about 2.5 weeks ago. I decided since it's at the end of the season to pinch off the plant so my 2nd pumpkin can grow bigger than the first. So far it's looking good.