Pumpkin & Squash Harvest (& How To Tell When They’re Ready to Pick)!!! 🎃🙌🧡 // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going so today is pumpkin and squash harvest day which is a day i have been excited for for 110 days to be exact i did count back it's been 110 days since i planted the seeds in the ground and they have been the most fun thing to watch grow and fill up this space i mean the fact that they were planted late and i didn't know what the soil was like and all of those things that i've said a million times i just am so excited just to be able to see some pumpkins and squash peeking through and i actually don't even know what's out there exactly because they got so thick so fast i haven't been able to walk through there without crushing vines so i've pretty much stayed out of there and i can see like some orange pumpkins and a few of the decorative ones so i really don't know what we're gonna find it's gonna be like a treasure hunt so 110 days though isn't quite long enough maturity time for some of these varieties which i think falls somewhere between 110 and 130 days so if i don't wreck all the vines there are some i might leave on for a little bit longer but i thought we would go through like how to tell when a pumpkin or squash is ready to be picked some of the signs you can look for and then how to harvest them so what i think we'll do is we will do that first i'll just find one that's on the perimeter here and then aaron said he would come out and help me because some of them are kind of big and heavy and we're just going to line them up we're going to just make piles out here in the walkways so we can kind of see exactly what we've got of each variety because i've got a lot i even have them all typed up so this is what i originally put in the ground in june eight of my original 60 hills did not germinate and i don't know which ones those were so some of these may not show up i did fill in the gaps with jack b littles and sugar pie pumpkins which you won't see on this list so quick overview of the pumpkin patch you can see some kind of deterioration of the vines it has been down i think we got down to 39 we've been at 39 for a couple of nights and so that's done a little bit of the damage but it's also been awful windy and so that did some as well and usually when you start seeing your vines start to die down like this it's getting pretty close to harvest time so i just want to find like a good classic pumpkin here i already harvested two in fact i used them up there next to our savannah urns but i think this would be a good example right there okay i'm just going to cut some of these leaves away just so we can see what's going on here the first thing to look for is the color if you planted an orange pumpkin you want it to be orange if it's mostly green still it's probably not ripe this one looks excellent very uniformly colored the next thing you can do is give it a thump so if you hear a nice hollow sound that's another good sign that it's ready the other one is how hard the skin or the rind of the pumpkin is so you can take your fingernail which i have sorry sad excuse for fingernails but see if you can easily pierce the rind with your fingernail i can't even get mine in there if your fingernail goes in easily it's probably not ready yet if it barely makes an indent or you can't get it in then you're ready good to go and the last sign is stem so if your stem is hard and darker green then it's ready if it's still soft and light green then it needs more time so once you've determined that your pumpkin or squash is ready to be picked you want to use a pair of sharp pruners or a knife to cut the stem and you'll want to cut the stem as long as you can it'll help it keep longer it's prettier you know good stems are really desirable especially like if you're buying pumpkins to decorate with um but i am going to be storing quite a number of these in our root cellar uh this fall and winter and so we want to make sure they have a good long stem so i've got my falco's here and we're just going to go ahead and harvest this one so i'm just gonna go in and cut this right where the stem meets the main branch here just like that oh look at that oh that's a beauty this is a connecticut field right here so i'm going to start my connecticut field pumpkin pile right here i think i planted three hills and they're all kind of in the same spot and there it is out there looking all cute i cannot wait to keep picking to see what's in here this is such an exciting day i feel like i feel like i've waited forever for this even though it hasn't been that long but a couple of other things pumpkins and squash do not store for very long if you're putting them in a sunny spot so i don't know that can't be avoided always if you've got a front porch that faces west or south or something that's just a very hot spot a couple of things you can just make sure your pumpkin is absolutely ready like by all the signs that i just showed you to be picked it will last a little bit longer than if you were to pick it prematurely you if you're the type who likes to decorate really early you might have to swap a pumpkin or two out if you want it to last the full season uh and then the rest of them that i'm not going to be using to decorate with i'm going to be storing in our root cellar which we will probably be keeping i'm guessing at around 50 55 degrees or something around there and that's typically they like a 50 to 60 degree temperature range so the ones i'm storing like the there's sweet meat and there's butternuts and acorns and things like that that we'll putting in there they should last for several months at that temperature and we'll talk about all of those things later on when we do our root cellar video because different varieties will store for longer than others and i also kind of want to talk about temperatures because i am storing several different things in our root cellar you know not just the pumpkins and squash but onions and potatoes and peppers and stuff like that so we've got to find some common ground since they're all in the same spot so we'll figure out temperature a little bit later on but for right now i just want to get them all harvested so let's just get after it [Music] [Music] do [Music] that big one we'll leave those pumpkins there let's go get new pumpkins do you want to help me pick somebody we'll get some new pumpkins in the pumpkin patch you toss it to me thank you he would do real well in a pumpkin top yeah here let's go set him down let's go walk over here and we'll set him down we'll create a pile okay right there why don't we create our pile right here benjamin that's a good spot here benjamin you want to put that in your pile down why here good job oh yep yep i have a good sized pile perfect pile right here do you want to get two i don't think this one's quite ready but we'll cut it anyway there you go all right so i haven't done an official count yet but look at all of these so many beautiful things i am thrilled and this is a good majority of what was out there there's still a couple of vines that had things that just weren't quite there i picked a couple of things like if it was on the line of being ripe or not i would pick it today um because we trampled the vines pretty good um and i'm not sure even the ones i left on there i'm hoping we didn't trample the spine so we'll just have to see how it goes and i'm not sure how much of that we actually captured because we were so thrilled so excited and benjamin was so excited um that i think the camera turned off midway through harvest so doesn't matter i want to give you a tour of all of these things i can't even believe it you guys i can't even believe it like all of those came out of here and there are some vines that only like the bigger varieties only usually produce like two or three fruit per vine and i only did like two hills of some of the varieties so i am just so pleased i went ahead for most of them i wrote down what the variety name was so that you could see it i suppose we could have put it on the screen i think about that oh well it helped me organize everything so we'll start on this end we've got some white acorn squash here there's 10 of them that came off of one plant those were actually planted on the west side so they were planted in the moon garden in the corner that's the only place i harvested other than just this patch and these are so fun to decorate with i love it i saw one time somebody lined them up on a mantel and did gold leather letters that said like thanksgiving or thankful or something like that i can't remember exactly but i remember it being striking next one which this vine there were only five ready the rest i left but these look like halloween don't they they also look excellent like if you were to hollow them out and do like a soup a baked squash with a soup in the middle they're great for that a really nice size squash then we've got the table acorn squash which i actually have two piles i will run across the other one here in a minute but these just none of these have been cleaned yet these look really pretty and shiny when they've been cleaned up really good for eating i really like acorn squash and then we've got connecticut field pumpkins quite a number of them a couple of which kind of like accidentally harvested those they're not quite orange yet but that's okay we like some variation in color there are actually a few left there's like this one right here and then this one's kind of a monster let me show you like this one is really large but it's pretty green the stem looks good like i could harvest it and just use it as a green pumpkin but i thought i would let it sit out here for a little while longer and i'm seeing two more squash that i missed i think that i could walk this space over and over again and i would keep finding things hold on i gotta add these to the pile all right i got those squash cut and i do think i have about eight or ten of the connecticut field pumpkins left out here that are just pretty much green still so we'll just keep checking on them so after that we have a variety called one too many which i bought from a farm stand last year and i really liked it only got four but they're pretty good size i mean it's a pretty good sized pumpkin right there and one of them came out more blue like or kind of like a sagey green and white oh hey russell but i thought that these were really pretty so i was excited to grow those next up are the fairy tales which should be a different color than they are right here they should be like more along the lines of this right here so they were picked a little bit before they were done but the stems were nice the rinds were nice and we trampled that vine and i just thought you know what let's just get them picked um and we'll use them to decorate and honestly we got enough variation in color and there's some pinks up there and a lot of orange up there that i think we're okay and i love the structure aren't those the most gorgeous things i don't even care that they're not orange they look beautiful just the way they are next we have this beautiful icy blue squash this is what it's called right there and i think out of everything that we grew this has the best shelf life they're like a sweet meat and they're beautiful so i will be storing some of these in the cellar and using a few to decorate with then we've got a couple that are really similar in fact i feel like that one belongs in that pile i'm not real sure they all came out kind of in a jumble but this one's called strawberry crown and then there were only two that i picked and they aren't fully colored yet but this is what it's called and i think they're beautiful look at this kind of a muted color i think one of my bigger takeaways this year was spacing them better because i feel like the fairy tales and this one here i had to harvest them even though i left a few on the vine of this variety because we just had to we had to walk on vines to get all the rest of them out um had i spaced them properly or further apart or just i guess left everything out here until really late till they were all right but i don't want to do that because i want to decorate with some but i think that's the only case where having them close together works um so i just kind of felt like these two varieties i just needed to get harvested absolutely gorgeous and like super wonderful dense like super hard rind super hard stems next up are the flat stackers now these are impressive they are so heavy these are probably the heavier ones out of all of them that we grew and i think the white is beautiful and they are going to be nice to stack i haven't done much research on this one to know if it's like really good for eating or not or if it's more of just a specialty decorating type to look into that here are more of the table acorns right there and then i forgot to make a sign for this one but these are the jack b little pumpkins there are more on the vine but they weren't quite ready i planted those late and then this variety there were just the two that were close to being ready i think these are super interesting to look at really interesting markings on their rind and then we've got the beautiful porcelain dolls aren't those so pretty oh i just think they're so gorgeous the color we got pretty good stems on most all of these things oh we've got a few more of the fairy tales right here these are also really heavy they're big and then the other one i forgot to make a tag these are the sugar pie pumpkins these also went in late you can see i picked a few green ones they had really good stems but i wanted the green for variation but i think that these are so cute and they create such like thick stems and i only picked one of these and it was an accident i left all the rest of them out there the honey nut butternut squash are not ready they all pretty much look like this right now so i think they should all be this color and i think we pretty much steer cleared of the vine so i think we'll be able to harvest these but just a little bit later then we have this guy i don't really know where it belongs i think i put it close to the cinderellas because i feel like that's the like the most feasible like i don't know kind of looks like it belongs in that lot oh benjamin there you go cinderellas are always really fun though really good to stack really pretty color these are really interesting these are called quaker pie pumpkins and i think they are gorgeous they have a really interesting color it's kind of like the lightest stage green ever with a tiny bit of pink like a tannish pink variegation i don't even know how to that's how i describe it i don't know how then we've got the pipian from texpan squash which are the more rounded ones here and a lot of them look at that pile and then we've got north falkland island squash which are the more squatty ones they look very similar in coloring but that's the pippian from tuxban north falkland island and there's quite a few of those right in there and then these great big ones are the green striped kusha is that how you say that kusha kasha big old beasty squash and a lot of them then we've got yokohama squash i think that these might be might be one of my favorites i don't know why but i think they're so interesting to look at and they've got kind of a warty appearance while not being warty if that makes sense they're just so cool looking unlike anything i've ever grown and amazing stems look at that sometimes like these right here give you hardly anything like that is as big as the stem as i could get without like main branch but these allowed for a lot of room to cut and then i got a no-name pile i don't know what these are these uh weren't quite ready i don't think they're close i mean the stems are really firm they're still pretty green though um so i'll just have to watch those and i don't even know what kind they are so i'm gonna run through just really quick and get a count for today's harvest um just so we know i don't know i think it'd be fun to know 345 pumpkins and squash now i counted 350 but i subtracted five it's kind of hard to tell when they're little and stacked in piles so i subtracted five just for my error possible error there and that's just amazing to me i cannot believe that there are that many knowing that there are more out here that possibly have time to ripen and change color and get to where they need to be and that's so many to decorate with to save in our root cellar to give away i plan to take some to do a decorating project in our city um we plan to do a project um later on this week and i'm just like beyond i can't even explain it can't even explain it i mean they went in late they went in in just this random spot but i do feel like well the soil's a lot better than i thought it was one they got full sun all day long they never had a moment when they were in the shade i think that that is really important they also had consistent water now i did add biotonen land and sea compost when i planted just a little bit right in the area where i put the seed but i never fertilized them again after that they just got consistent water after that point so i feel like this is amazing and we had a great time picking them i did find three black widows on three different squash so every single one that i cut and picked i was just inspecting it to make sure there wasn't any black widows on it we don't have a lot of those typically but we found four out here just in this space this year so you know i haven't found any in our um our old garden i don't know is that what i should call it old garden new garden whatever you guys know what i mean i haven't seen one over there so having four in this one space i'm like oh boy i don't i don't mind spiders but black widows don't love those so here are my takeaways from this year definitely amend the soil make sure you have irrigation set up uh space them out a little bit further i had these rows spaced six feet apart and then i spaced the hills six and a half feet apart i think i would have been better with eight um i think the vines still would have grown together but it would give us given us a tiny bit more room i also would space things or plant things rather based on their maturity dates so if you've got a bunch of small things that want to mature quick i would do them all in one row so that you could pick them all kind of at the same time and not be afraid to trample a vine of something else that needs to stay out here longer um i would also pay attention to the surrounding like there's one squash that got caught in the fence over here in fact i just posted a picture of it it's one of the kusha green stripe kusha squash over there i would just be mindful i mean we'll just eat that one first i'll just cut it out of the fence and um and we'll eat it but i also had one stuck in the obelisk over there too and i had to really work on getting that out but if you pay attention to those when things when they're smaller then you know they won't get stuck and in terms of the amount of varieties super happy with that i think i would plant a lot of these same things again and i don't feel like i am lacking anything really like maybe if i wanted to do a whole bunch more porch decorating or whatever we would need more like um carving type regular pumpkins like the connecticut field so maybe we'll up that a little bit but overall super happy with it oh no cheddar's out here i just want to take one last quick look through these just so you can kind of see them all at one time hey cheddar hey buddy i would love to know which one of these is your favorite so that's gonna be it for today's project i hope you guys enjoyed seeing this harvest i sure enjoyed myself it was so much fun it was fun to see benjamin when he came out here he had his arms up in the air and i don't know if we actually captured it on camera but he was going pumpkin patch he was so excited and it was just so like it's such a moment for me because like last year he didn't care about pumpkins he didn't really know what was going on and now he's starting to get it and it's just it's gonna get fun i'm so excited not that it hasn't been fun you know what i mean like when they start to enjoy those things and understand it's just awesome so anyway thank you guys so much for watching i hope you're having a great day and we will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 207,267

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: 9SHx94aQyuc

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020