Backgarden Pumpkin Patch 2023 (part 1)

My first attempt at growing a pumpkin

Halloween has always been my favourite holiday, as someone who grew up in the UK and wasn’t allowed to go trick or treating. I can’t even explain why. (Maybe it’s because I was born in October, and spooky stuff was around me from day one.)

But because of this, I have always wanted to grow a pumpkin patch! This year, I finally stopped procrastinating and did it!! Well, my fiancé did most of the work, but our 4 year old helped me put the seeds in the ground, so I did it.

Okay, okay, it doesn’t look like much, just mud, but under that mud are pumpkin seeds that we planted together (probably a bit too late and a bit too close together). It didn’t take long at all to start seeing the first signs of life, maybe a week or so. Obviously, I got ridiculously, excited over the tiny little babies in the garden.

Within a few days, they were double the size and more and then within a few weeks.. they were like huge, like I didn’t expect them to grow so fast. The size of the leaves genuinely amazed me and my fiancé. I literally checked them every single day for flowers because, obviously, I have no patience.

Then, while doom scrolling my way through Instagram reels, I came across some other back garden pumpkin growers and realised that, I didn’t do even half the amount of research I should have (let’s not forget I also didn’t pay much attention to what I did research) and started to panic.

Why was I panicking? Because there on my phone in my hand was evidence! Evidence that this little pumpkin patch I had planned could actually take over my whole garden if I didn’t come up with a solution.

The actual chances of that happening with this patch I don’t know, but I also didn’t expect a single seed to actually grow, so naturally, my brain hit the panic button.

So the next move was to try and make them grow up. Wondering why I wanted to try and make them grow up? Have a look at pumpkin tunnels on Instagram, and you’ll see why. Now, obviously, I could tell it was too late to make a tunnel, but I didn’t think it was too late to try and grow them up. With only Pinterest scrolling as my research, I set my fiancé to work.

They then started growing up, I couldn’t tell if they we’re actually climbing this contraption or not and then got distracted when I noticed the first female flower bud.

I literally went out to check on her every day, while also trying to find more because everything in me believed she would bloom before any of the male flowers and I can’t even explain why I believed that.