Homemade fertilizer for pumpkins helps gardeners provide their patch with the nutrition for a large harvest. Some growers focus on making organic pumpkin plant fertilizer in their organic gardening program, while others are concerned with being cost-effective and reusing food wastes and garden scraps in the compost pile. Fortunately, several options for DIY fertilizer are available to suit many gardens and growers.
Although all pumpkins are winter squash, some are produced solely for decoration while others are food. Most pumpkins cultivated at home are Cucurbita pepo cultivars or hybrids and the growing season for pumpkins is over the summer and into fall. Like most squash, pumpkin is a vining annual with big, gritty leaves, and the vines grow and spread low to the ground.
In July and August, the plants bloom a yellow male flower, producing fast-growing fruits which ripen on the vine until harvest in the fall. Learning how to fertilize pumpkins with homemade DIY blends allows growers to control the substances introduced into their garden.
- How to Fertilize Pumpkins with Homemade Fertilizer
- Required Nutrients for the Best Fertilizer for Pumpkin Plants
- Homemade Fertilizer for Pumpkins with Epsom Salt
- Organic Pumpkin Plant Fertilizer from the Compost Pile
- Egg Shells are a Natural Pumpkin Fertilizer
- Banana Peel Fertilizer for Fruiting
- Make a DIY Fertilizer for Pumpkins at Planting Time
- Commercial Pumpkin Plant Food
- Fertilizing Pumpkins with Granular Fertilizer vs Liquid Fertilizer
- Precautions When Making DIY Pumpkin Fertilizer
- Pumpkin Pests and Disease
How to Fertilize Pumpkins with Homemade Fertilizer
Homemade fertilizer for pumpkins must cater to the demands of the plants by providing them with nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, or NPK. Understanding how to fertilize pumpkins requires knowing which nutrients are in demand at which phases of their plant’s life and how to provide them to ensure maximum fruiting. You can easily grow pumpkins in pots or containers as well as in the garden. Fertilize them the same.
There are options for organic pumpkin plant fertilizer such as compost and eggshells and reusing food waste like old coffee grounds and banana peels. Choose a fertilizer method based on your supplies, what stage of life your pumpkin plants are in, and which areas of your soil quality you’d like to address.
Required Nutrients for the Best Fertilizer for Pumpkin Plants
When pumpkins are in a vegetative stage and producing leaves, they require a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. At the first fruit development, more potassium and phosphorus are needed, promoting fruit growth and fruit set.
If you bought commercial fertilizer from a gardening store, start with a higher initial number, such as 10-5-5, and then move to a 5-10-5 later. Those numbers represent fertilizer’s nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium percentages.
Higher numbers first indicate more nitrogen in the mix, whereas higher second and third numbers indicate more phosphorus and potassium.
Homemade Fertilizer for Pumpkins with Epsom Salt
Epsom salt is commonly used to ease aches and pains due to its high magnesium-sulfur concentration, though it also works well as a fertilizer for pumpkins.
It aids pumpkin plants in growing and fruiting more successfully, no matter what different pumpkin shapes you have. Despite its being a salt, it does not reduce the soil quality. Snails and slugs avoid Epsom salt, which is excellent for protecting your pumpkin vine leaves from attack.
To apply Epsom salt to fertilize your pumpkin patch or if you need a DIY fertilizer for watermelon, dissolve the salt in water and water as usual with the mixture.
Organic Pumpkin Plant Fertilizer from the Compost Pile
Building two different organic compost piles, one for the vegetative stage and one for the fruiting stage, may be the ideal solution for DIY organic fertilizer. Leaves or other garden detritus should make up the majority of each mound.
Coffee grounds, kitchen wastes, and manure are excellent nitrogen sources for the vegetative pile and address pumpkin plant leaves turning yellow. For the fruiting pile, focus on potassium-rich organic matter like banana peels or wood ash and phosphorus-rich materials like grass clippings.
If you’re willing to make small purchases to enhance your compost, get some fish emulsion to add nitrogen, bone meal for phosphorus, and kelp meal for potassium. Add them to the piles according to the label’s directions.
Put your compost in a hot composting container with plenty of air openings but contained enough to let the compost heat quickly to use it for your pumpkins. Every several days, turn the heaps over.
Egg Shells are a Natural Pumpkin Fertilizer
Eggshells are a natural fertilizer choice for growing pumpkins or as a natural fertilizer for eggplant plants. When added to the soil, the shells provide calcium, a required nutrient for your pumpkin patch to thrive and produce good fruit. In addition to providing extra nutrition, eggshells deter slugs and snails, making them valuable pest control items.
To use eggshells to fertilize your pumpkins, allow the shells to dry out and grind them into a powder. Sprinkle the powder around the base of each pumpkin plant before regular watering.
Banana Peel Fertilizer for Fruiting
Bananas and their peels contain a lot of potassium, which helps your pumpkin plants stay healthy and resistant to bacterial and fungal infections while producing much fruit.
Banana peels may be soaked in water like coffee grounds or processed into a powder. Dry some peels in the sun or roast them at a low temperature until crispy. Powder the banana peels and spread it over the foundation of your pumpkin plants.
Banana peels are an inexpensive way to provide nutrients to your pumpkin plants. Calcium, phosphates, magnesium, sulfur, and potassium are abundant in banana peels. Gardeners compost banana peels or make a banana liquid or powdered fertilizer.
Make a DIY Fertilizer for Pumpkins at Planting Time
Manure tea is an organic fertilizer made from natural sources and is an excellent fertilizer after planting pumpkin seeds and throughout the vegetative phase in place of regular watering. Work outside when blending aged manure and water to make fertilizer tea because the organic component makes it smelly work.
Allow the mixture to soak for ten days before spraying it on your pumpkin patch. The pumpkin plants absorb the organic fertilizer liquid, boosting soil nutrients while keeping pests away. Throughout the vegetative process, manure tea promotes the growth of healthier and more abundant pumpkin vines.
Commercial Pumpkin Plant Food
Whether you started your pumpkin plant from seed or are working with a pumpkin seedling, commercial fertilizer packages are sometimes the easiest choice for plant growth if you don’t have time to make your own blend for fertilizing pumpkins.
Commercial products are available as inorganic fertilizer and organic fertilizer. Both aim to provide essential nutrients and enrich your garden soil to increase the size of your harvest.
Products are available for use when planting pumpkins and later in the growing season. Always review the guidelines and employ commercial fertilizers per the manufacturer’s instructions to avoid damaging your pumpkin patch.
Fertilizing Pumpkins with Granular Fertilizer vs Liquid Fertilizer
When it comes to utilizing liquid fertilizer or granular fertilizer for their pumpkins, most growers have a preference. Liquid fertilizer is appealing since it requires one step: spraying it on plants and letting it work. Granules may instill trust because they are dusted directly onto the soil’s surface around the vines and then watered in.
Applying fertilizer and ensuring your plant obtains the nutrients to thrive is far more critical than the method. Choose a liquid or granular fertilizer based on what’s best for you, given the time you have and your garden setup.
Precautions When Making DIY Pumpkin Fertilizer
It’s possible to unwittingly create an unbalanced DIY fertilizer if you make a mistake while preparing it and causing harm to your plants. Before applying your homemade fertilizer to the entirety of your pumpkin patch, test it on one plant or a small section of your pumpkin bed.
Running a test application pays off whether you are new to planting pumpkins or a long-time pumpkin enthusiast. As with misusing a commercial fertilizer product, applying an improperly made DIY fertilizer could have catastrophic consequences, from burning leaves and vines to destroying plants.
Pumpkin Pests and Disease
Like fertilizing, pest control is crucial throughout the growing season to ensure you have a vast harvest. Vegetable plants are hardier against pests and disease when they are healthy, and a pumpkin vine is no exception. Fertilizing is one way to ensure vigor against disease when growing pumpkin plants.
Many of the pests and illnesses targeting other squash varieties also damage pumpkins. Vine borer insects, which invade the stems and damage the vines, are the most dangerous.
Vine borers are challenging to treat, so the best solution is prevention by wrapping the bottom of the vine with aluminum foil or another protective material where it meets the earth.
Whether you want to produce the perfect Cinderella pumpkin or hope to grow a giant pumpkin, treat any signs of pests and disease immediately to protect the health of your pumpkin patch and save your harvest.
Fertilizer is critical if you want to grow a substantial pumpkin harvest to make pumpkin puree or a delicious pumpkin pie. Knowing how to fertilize pumpkins with DIY and homemade mixtures ensures your pumpkin patch always has access to nutrition to produce an abundance of giant pumpkins.
If you loved this article on homemade fertilizer for pumpkins, please share this brilliant information on organic pumpkin plant fertilizer with your friends and family on Pinterest and Facebook.