You want to try growing pumpkins?

Here is a link that might be useful: Giants

I have yet to have luck with pumpkins (and winter squashes) - squash vine borers beat me to them every year. Learning as I go, though, and will try again next year (I still have some seeds).

I had a bad time with cucumber beetles last year... I grow my pumpkins, gourds, anything that needs a lot of space, at a friends farm. He sprayed with sevin as soon as the first little buggers showed up last spring and we had no problems. I don't like using incecticides, but sometimes its just necessary *sigh* Its a trade-off though, no chemicals, or no veggies.

I had a bad time with SVB too! However, we still did get about 21 little punkies and only 3 are orange! Too funny, I actually just tossed the kids mini punkins out into the sheet compost last year and voila! up springs a punkin patch. I've got eighteen of the oddballs that are shades of white and yellow. :)

I grew pumpkins once, by accident. I'd throw out my rotten cucs out in the back yard. When I saw sprouts the following spring, I assumed they were cucs, and transplanted to my veggie bed. D'OH! Turned out they were pumpkins, which I forgot I had thrown back there after the halloween pumpkins rotted. I panicked and rigged up a trellis to hold them, along with pantyhose slings to support them. Thankfully, they were relatively small pumpkins. Amazingly I didn't have any pest problems that year!

Okay, back on topic; those are very cute. I wish I had the space to grow them...

FYI--Here's something to try to keep the squash bugs, vine borers and the like away from your pumpkins and squash. Plant mint. It sounds crazy, but I'm here to attest that I've tried it and it works!

I used to have troubles trying to grow squash and pumpkins. When the pumpkins were still in their infancy, they'd be covered with millions of squash bugs and never make it to maturity. So, upon reading an issue of Organic Gardening Magazine, there was a suggestion to try planting mint in the same area that you plant your squash/pumpkins.

Fearing that the mint would take over the entire field, I potted up the mint plants in large black pots first, then sunk the pot into the ground around the squash plants. Guess what NO SQUASH BUGS!! and all the squash/pumpkins grew to maturity just fine!

I must also confess, that the mint did escape the black pots and did spread into the garden. But it really didn't hurt a thing since the mint is so shallow rooted...it shared the space with the plants quite nicely. It has been five years since I first tried this "mint trick" and I still have no bug problems. I do not use any pesticides at all on any part of my garden. And yes, mint is still popping up here and there....but it's all been good!!