Wider spacing, more pumpkins!

Avoid overcrowding your pumpkins on the land, says Bill Kerr. The further apart the plants are, the more space the runners will have, and the more fruit the plants are likely to produce.

- Bill Kerr

When the Boer pumpkin was still the market leader in South Africa, the seed was very cheap. This is because it is an open-pollinated variety and all seed companies were selling it.

As price was not a limitation, most growers would plant at the higher recommended rates. A good yield of Boer pumpkins is 25t/ha. Given an average size of about 5kg, this would be 5 000 pumpkins. Many of the recommendations at the time suggested 2,5kg/ha, and this was far more seeds than pumpkins harvested.

I remember meeting a farmer from Limpopo who was delivering pumpkins to a processor. While he was offloading, I explained to him that the hotter the weather, the further apart the rows needed to be.