Wonder if its Mosaic virus of some sort. I've read that it results in bumpy fruit. Have your leaves been weird shaped, and spotty yellow looking?

Actually the leaves have been little spotty. The plant doesn't seem to be growing anymore leaves, or if it does then its doing it really slowly. The stems are also bent in odd directions.

I had a bad case of leaf eaters, so I am going to assume it is a mosaic virus. Is the infection isolated? That is, could I cut off all the bad looking leaves and possibly have a second run?

Actually the leaves have been little spotty. The plant doesn't seem to be growing anymore leaves, or if it does then its doing it really slowly. The stems are also bent in odd directions.

I had a bad case of leaf eaters, so I am going to assume it is a mosaic virus. Is the infection isolated? That is, could I cut off all the bad looking leaves and possibly have a second run?

I've read that its not.. that the whole plant will have it. But in my experience I think it affects different plants more than others. I think most of my plants had it to some degree this year, but some were affected more than others, and some grew and produced well, while other didnt do much at all.

It's normally a different species but I'm wondering if you accidentally planted a variety of C. Maxima rather than pie pumpkins. There is a type called peanut pumpkins that have very nodular types of skin.

Here is a link that might be useful:

No, these are definitely pie pumpkins. Says so on the package ;-)
The one other pumpkin I have has stopped growing and has started to turn orange. It's still so small! Oh well.

Seems the plant is still vining and growing flowers, so I will continue to see where this goes, but yes the leaves are definitely a bit spotty, and some vines are very thin. It was a good learning experience this year regardless!

Thanks for pointing in the right direction at least!

That's one reason why its probably a good idea to plant more rather than less. You can let them grow and you can pull out the more sickly plants, and keep the healthier ones around.

Another thing... I think pumpkin plants much rather grow on the ground, where they can send down roots all along the vine, creating a stronger plant. I noticed you said you have yours on a trellis.

This post was edited by ccabal on Mon, Aug 26, 13 at 12:25

Yeah, I have mine growing on a trellis b/c I didn't want them to sprawl all over the place. I'm in Japan and land space is limited. I mean we have plenty of land compared to the average, but I need to to ensure the plants stay within a specific area so my kids can have their play space.

Is it easy to control sprawling and confine plants to a specific area?