You’ve spent your entire summer babying your pumpkin vines, giving them soil to put roots into, plenty of water, and lots of sunlight. By autumn, their fruits will be ready for picking. Pick them too early, and they’ll taste bland and have hard flesh, but harvest them too late, and they’ll be rotting, mushy, and inedible.
There is no perfect time to harvest, but there are optimal times you can do so depending on your kitchen, garden, and schedule. Let’s say the pumpkin is ripe, but you don’t have room to store it indoors. You’ll want to leave it until you’re ready for it. This is but one example of many scenarios that can dictate when you should pick your squash.
Some of us gardeners have less than favorable ripening conditions in our fields. Whether it’s pests, weather, or diseases, an early harvest helps thwart these pressures before they affect fruit quality. You know your garden better than anyone else and will be the best judge of your pumpkins’ ripeness. Use these tips and tricks to help you make the call.
So, how long can you leave ripe pumpkins on their vine?
Cinderella Pumpkin Seeds
- Deeply ridged
- 12″–24″ across, and weighs 15–20 pounds
- Terrific decoration whether carved or not
- Moderately sweet
- Perfect for baking and canning
The inspiration for the carriage in the charming fairy tale, your kids will be delighted to grow Cinderella’s coach.
The Short Answer
Ripe pumpkins can remain on vines until your first frost date in autumn. You can pick them earlier than this, although leaving them longer gives them better flavor. You may harvest them as soon as their skins resist puncturing and they have their mature color. Early harvests require a longer curing period, which we’ll cover below.
The Long Answer
When you should harvest your ripening pumpkins depends on your garden, your climate, and your growing goals. If you appreciate sweet, savory pumpkin flesh, you’ll want to leave them on the vine as long as possible. If you face harvesting challenges like pests, diseases, or wet weather, you may want to pick them earlier rather than later.
Ripe Ones Have Thick Skin
The best way to know if your winter squash are ripe is to try the fingernail test. Using your thumbnail, press into the skin. If your nail punctures it, it’s too soft. Mature fruit is ready for harvesting if the hard skin resists puncturing.
Another prime ripeness indicator is the skin’s color. Whether your variety ripens green, white, orange, or a mixture of the three, you’ll want them to have their mature color all over. If they’re orange in some places but still green in others, they need more time on the vine to swell.
First Frost Makes Flesh Sweeter
You can leave your fruits on their vine until your first light frost. Low temperatures kill the growing vine and leave your ripe harvest in the garden. Although the plant dies, cold, freezing temperatures sweeten pumpkin flesh and make it perfect for pies, cakes, and other desserts.
After a first frost, it’s a good idea to cure and store your harvest. Repeated freezes may cause rot, and the insides turn mushy and goopy. When you watch your garden closely, you’ll catch your ripe gourds when they’re sweet, juicy, and delicious.
Why Harvest Early?
You’ll want to harvest your orange gourds early if you garden with regions with wet, shady autumn weather, or where frost arrives early. Like tomatoes, pumpkins ripen off the vine if they are already changing colors when you pick them. They’ll keep changing and grow sweeter with the right conditions.
To harvest early, cut the stems anytime after their skin turns a mature color. Prune them at their stems, leaving a few inches attached to the main body. Stems protect the inside from rot, fruit flies, and other pests.
Place your unripe fruits where temperatures are between 80-85°F (27-29°C) for about 10 days, give or take. A greenhouse, porch, barn, or garage with good airflow works well. They’ll be ready for curing and long-term storage when their skins are their mature hue, and when they resist puncturing with your fingernail.
Protect Ripening Pumpkins
While they ripen, some materials help them stay dry, rot-free, and safe from pests. Squash lying on dirt are at risk of invasions from soil-borne larvae, diseases, and tunneling insects. Use a layer of straw mulch below ripening gourds in between them and the soil.
This protective soil coating keeps tunneling critters from leaving the ground and entering your fruits. It also keeps gourds dry despite rainfall, as straw facilitates easy drainage around the site. Water enters the straw and then the soil before soaking into plant roots. Above ground, straw dries quickly, allowing your fruits to stay dry amidst typical fall weather.
Of all the issues, two to watch for are powdery mildew and squash bugs. These two are common pumpkin offenders. Prevent powdery mildew by watering at the soil line and avoiding overhead watering, especially at night.
Keep squash bugs at bay by destroying their yellow-brown egg clusters on leaves. Trap them by placing a wooden board around the vine at night, then lift it in the morning. The bugs will be on it— pick them off and drop them into a bucket of soapy water. Compost the dead bugs to return their nutrients to the soil.
Cure Before Storing
Whether you harvested them early or left them on the vine until the first frost, you should cure your pumpkins before long-term storage. Curing is a process for most vegetables that hardens their skin, keeping them safe from rot and pest invaders.
Garlic, onions, and winter squash are common vegetables that undergo curing before grocers sell them to us, but you can do it to your homegrown produce. Keep picked pumpkins in a protected area with temperatures between 80-85°F (27-29°C) for at least 10 days. That’s it! After 10 days they’ll heal their cuts and wounds, so you can keep them for a few weeks to months.
If you notice any mushy, discolored, or rotten-smelling fruits during curing, promptly remove them before they spread to healthy ones. Even with the best conditions diseases or rots sometimes afflict vegetables and fruits. Do your best to mitigate their spread, and you’ll enjoy plenty of ripe pumpkins from autumn through spring.
Long Term Storage
Cured pumpkins can last one to three months in cool, dark conditions. A pantry, storage closet, or underground cellar is perfect to keep them in. Aim to keep them between 50-60°F (10-16°C) with humidity levels between 50-70%. They’ll stay perky, sweet, and fresh for up to three months.
If you lack space in your home with these conditions, you may also store them at room temperature on a countertop. They won’t last for three months, but they’ll keep for up to four weeks. As with curing, remove any rotting fruits from storage to prevent disease from spreading.
Canning is another great method for preserving your harvest to eat later. Use your favorite recipes for canning pumpkin flesh—use preserves for pies, ice creams, and stews up to 12 months after canning.
Save Seeds For Next Year
When you grow pumpkins successfully with few diseases or pests, ample harvests, and easy curing, preserve their seeds to grow next year. It’s a blessing to find a variety that likes growing in your garden, and when you save seeds, you have a surefire way of replicating that success.
Pumpkins may cross-pollinate if you grow more than two varieties, giving you a new hybrid next year that could be toxic. If this happens, try finding seeds of the original variety you grew. Ingesting squash that is toxic due to cross-pollination can make you sick. Start over and stick to one variety if you want to keep seeds that are true to their type.
Preserve seeds by washing and drying them, then store them in an airtight container in a cool, dark location. They’ll stay viable for at least a year but can last for many years in ideal conditions.
