How To Grow Giant Pumpkins With Milk

You must have heard about it, but how to grow giant pumpkins with milk?

Growing pumpkin seeds is not a big deal, but growing giant ones needs extra attention. You can use different organic and inorganic fertilizers to give your pumpkin the essential nutrients to grow.

Milk is one of the oldest organic supplements containing many minerals and vitamins that help the pumpkin become a giant.

Calcium is usually known as the primary extract of milk and is considered a bone booster in humans.  It also does the same for pumpkins and strengthens the cell walls. These strong walls prevent cracks in the pumpkin’s outer skin and save the fruit from rotting.

Here we will discuss the use of milk to grow a giant pumpkin.

Grow a Giant Pumpkin With Milk

Farmers have been using milk to nourish pumpkins for a long time. There are several ways to use milk for growing giant pumpkins.

Here we will discuss the two proven ways of using milk to nourish the pumpkin.

The first is watering the plant with milk, and the other is performing a plant surgery to infuse the milk for extra growth.

Let’s take a look, turn by turn.

Use the Watering Method To Nourish the Pumpkin With Milk

There is a variety of milk available in the market, whole milk, half-cream milk, skimmed milk, and many more. You need to find cow’s or fresh goat’s milk for better pumpkin growth.  It is much better than stored milk as it goes through various processes that kill almost all good and bad bacteria for long life.

As whole milk rots very soon when exposed to hot temperatures, you need to have diluted milk to avoid any rotten status.

Before watering the milk, dilute it with water in a 10:1 ratio. Calcium and other nutritious elements work well in liquid form, and plants can use these elements easily as nutrition..

Now water your pumpkin with this diluted milk like regular watering. Pour milk into the soil so the plant can get rich nutrition from its roots. Alongside the milk watering, care for pests and regularly spray to prevent diseases.

Your pumpkin will need one inch per week of irrigation for better growth. The watering milk will enhance the growth of your pumpkin as compared to others. It will also change the color and taste of the pumpkin.

The color will be close to orange, but the flavor will be milkier.

Use the Wick for Milk-Feeding Your Pumpkins

Using a wick is easy to milk-feed your pumpkin to become heavy and extra-large. You don’t need any specialized equipment for this surgery; you need a sharp blade, a wick, a milk container, a bandage, and your time too.

Prepare the Vine for Milk Feeding

Selecting a healthy vine that can yield a giant pumpkin is vital. If there are many blossoms on one vine, the feed intake will be divided into all blooms, and you cannot get the desired giant pumpkin. So, you have to select one healthy blossom and remove all others.

• Go to your pumpkin field and pick out a healthy vine.
• Cut off all the branches and stems with a sharp knife except the one you selected.
• On the selected vine, choose one healthy blossom and remove all others.
• This blossom will yield a giant pumpkin with the milk feed.
• Make a tiny straight cut on the selected vine with a sharp knife below the blossom.
• Tearing or pressing will damage the stem cells and ultimately damage the plant.
• Be careful the vine should not split apart.
• The slit should be shallow enough to hold the wick inside.

Inserting a Wick Properly

It is the most vital part of your preparation for getting a giant pumpkin. Special attention and some expertise are necessary to perform this grafting.

Follow these steps to do it properly.

• Take a wick; it can be a candle wick, a lantern wick, or a strip of cotton cloth.
• Carefully insert one end of the wick inside the slit you made on the vine.
• Be careful; the slit should not spread apart while inserting the wick.
• Bandage the slit carefully, keeping the wick inside without damaging the vine’s interior structure.
• The bandage will hold the wick inside the slit and protect it from insect intrusion.
• The pumpkin plant needs careful handling as you do with living things to protect them from infections.
• You have done the grafting successfully.

Prepare the Source of Milk Feeding

A good milk source ensures the milk feeding to your plant yields a giant pumpkin.

Follow these steps to set up a milk source.

• Dig the mud and make a hole underneath the slit.
• Take a Mason jar and fix it in that hole.
• You can take some bowls, but your cat can use that bowl for drinking the milk.
• Fill the Mason jar with milk.
• Dip the wick inside the jar and let it absorb the milk.
• The osmosis begins, and your pumpkin takes the milk feed through the wick.
• You can use the stem instead of the vine for grafting the wick, as it is a regular practice by many farmers.
• Whether you use vine or stem for milk-feeding, make sure your pumpkin soil receives one inch of water weekly, it may be rainfall or manual irrigation.

You have finished the setup for milk-feeding your pumpkin. Now you should take care of your Mason jar daily and not let it dry. It needs more attention when the weather is hot and dry. Your pumpkin will take the milk feed from the mason jar continuously. This extra nutrition will help your pumpkin grow bigger and heavier than the neighboring pumpkins that don’t know about any milk feed.

Is Milk the Only Option To Grow Giant Pumpkins?

All plants require calcium to absorb other necessary nutrients, and milk contains soluble/liquid forms of calcium and other minerals easily absorbed by plants. But, like with any fertilizer, over-fertilizing will harm your plants. So if you add too much fertilizer, injecting milk (or sugar water) into the vine or stem does not significantly (if at all) increase the weight of giant pumpkin seeds.

As a matter of fact, milk is a pricy, ineffective fertilizer.

There is nothing unique about the milk’s components that makes it more beneficial to plants than other organic substances frequently utilized as fertilizers. You can even combine your preferred yogurt, bananas, strawberries, and ice to make a tasty smoothie you could slather on your plants after diluting it with water.

Growing enormous pumpkins does not need much effort or financial investment. Give your pumpkin plants two inches of water every week, and water them four to seven times every week to keep them hydrated. The soil should drain effectively and have an equal pH balance.

Summing Up

It takes about 120 to 145 days for the pumpkin to mature well. When it exceeds 36 inches in diameter, cover it with some wooden shade or cloth. Excess sunshine can crack the outer skin which may lead to rotting your hard-earned fruit.

Milk fed pumpkins will be paler from the outside as compared with orange pumpkins. The outer skin will be thinner and hollow from the inside when you cut it. Also, the inner side of this milk-fed pumpkin will be paler.

Your milk-feeding pumpkin will need regular irrigation and pet treatment to prevent plant disease. The milk-fed pumpkin significantly boosts size and weight, but it is not cost-effective. You can win a prize in a pumpkin-size competition, but it is not commercially feasible!