Pete's Pumpkin Patch
Young author and entrepreneur enjoys growing pumpkins and profiting from the harvest.
September/October 1985
By Pete Johnson
Mother's Children
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I have a booming pumpkin business. I grow pumpkins and sell them in the month of October. I started my venture three years ago in a 3,000-square-foot area, and now I'm planting one three times as big!
Every year my dad and I till up a field and dig holes where each plant hill is going to be. The hills are spaced anywhere from four to twelve feet apart, depending on the variety of pumpkin. We put a shovelful of cow manure in each hole (thanks to our local dairy farm). We also put in a few cups of organic fertilizer: cottonseed meal, lime, rock phosphate, ashes, and kelp meal. Then we mix it all together with soil.
After that I plant three or four seeds in each hill. After the pumpkins sprout, I transplant and thin as needed to make sure there are two or three plants in each hill. The young plants need a lot of water after being transplanted, so I really soak them. I also weed thoroughly.
A few weeks later the plants will probably need another watering. That takes a long time. My sister Danika weeds and waters with me. I pay her depending upon how much money I make. (This year she worked 20 hours and I paid her $25. Danika also grew gourds and sold them—she made $75 from her gourds!)
The next job with the pumpkins is mulching. My whole family helps with this job—all six of us. We spread spoiled hay under all the vines and in the open places to keep the ground moist and control weeds. The best thing to do after mulching on a hot afternoon is to go for a swim!
For the rest of the summer all I have to do is water the pumpkins and watch them get ripe. You can actually see them getting bigger and bigger every day!
This year I grew three varieties of pumpkins. The Spirit hybrid semibush variety produced nice, medium-sized pumpkins. I also grew some Connecticut Field pumpkins. They make big, orange, pretty pumpkins and are my favorite variety. And I grew some Small Sugars, a sweet pumpkin that weighs between three and seven pounds.
