From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Indiana

This is my first year attempting to grow a big pumpkin, I have read some books and seen some stuff on here about burying vines. At what point in the growing process do you start to bury them?

6/3/2013 11:42:29 AM

Germany

You should not bury the leaf nodes which are very close to the stump. Also, you should take care to bury only the leaf node but let the flowers grow (and in case of the main vine, to let the flowers and the secondaries grow). Buried too early, the flowres and secondaries might die if they cannot emerge from the soil. Hence, you should wait until you can bury the leaf node without the danger of having just everything buried. In my opinion, with the main vine you should have at least 3 or 4 ft which aren´t buried, in case of the secondaries you should have 1.5 or 2.5 ft which aren´t buried. In addition to the flowers and secondaries, there´s another reason for that: The internodals (sections between the leaf nodes) will stretch for a while, and it will take some time until it has reached the final separation between two leaves. That´s when the leaf nodes are more likely to stay in that place where you buried them (buried earlier they will move, or there will be some additional stress on the vine).
If you limit your plants´ underground activities to the leaf nodes or if you want to bury the whole vine, that´s up to you, there are PROs and CONs in each case.

6/3/2013 12:12:34 PM