To grow quality pumpkins, cucumbers and melons and get heavy, high Brix crops you must have a deeply worked (double dug or deep, free draining) soil. Plants in this family must have air, moisture and high levels of nutrients available to the roots. They are heavy feeders. See our fertilisation program for heavy feeders , if your soil is not yet up to scratch. We often feed the soil around the root zone with a liquid cow manure or comfrey/vermicast mix when actively setting and growing pumpkins
Pumpkins, melons etc also are best not watered from above, they do far better if their roots bring up the water to the leaves. We use drip irrigation lines on these crops, or we water carefully so as not to water via the leaves, especially in the afternoons.
If you see powdery mildew beginning, spray with raw milk at 10:1. Weekly foliar feeding with EF:Growth or EF: Fruit Foliar or a foliar of your own ( check with a refractometer that whatever you use is actually helping the plants)will help keep the leaves dark green and strong and able to resist powdery mildew as well.
