After sowing a pumpkin seed with Westland at Bord Bia Bloom, it’s now time to care your your seedling and help nurture it into a pumpkin!

This page contains everything you need to know from the time you bring your pumpkin seed home, to harvesting it in the autumn, so make sure you bookmark or save this page so you can return throughout your growing journey!

Share your gardening journey to win

Share your photos of your growing pumpkin to enter our competition to win a Westland gardening bundle worth €250! Scroll down or click here to enter!

When you get home

Once you get your pumpkin seed home, take off your card pot-topper, give it a good drink and place it somewhere warm, a sunny windowsill is perfect! You can pop a bit of cling film over the top of the pot to increase the humidity and help germination.

Once your seed has germinated, usually between 5 to 7 days, remove the cling film and water your growing seedling regularly, keeping it in a sunny place. With water and warmth, you should see your seedling start to grow bigger and bigger!

Planting out

Once your pumpkin seedling is ready to plant out, usually once you see 5-10 sets of leaves on your plant, find your perfect spot. You need an area that gets as much sunlight as possible! Get your pumpkin plant used to the outside by placing outside in the morning, and bringing in at night for 7-10 days.

On planting day, dig a hole twice as deep as your fibre pot and half fill with Westland New Horizon compost. Your pumpkin can be planted out in its fibre pot as this will disintegrate in the soil, or you can remove the plant from your fibre pot and pop into the planting hole. Use some more compost to fill in around the plant and gently firm into the ground.

Give your pumpkin a good drink of water and a first feed with Westland Big Tom Super Tomato Food to give it a burst of nutrients!

Caring for your growing plant

Over the coming weeks and months, continue to water and feed your pumpkin plant regularly. Pumpkins are vigorous growers, so need feeding!

Pumpkins are usually pollinated by insects, so once your pumpkin plant is big enough, you should start to notice fruits forming from the flowers. To help your pumpkin plant grow the biggest pumpkins possible, select just two or three of the growing fruits and remove all the others. This will help your pumpkin plant focus all its energy on those pumpkins!

Harvesting

When it comes to autumn time, leave your pumpkin on the stalk for as long as possible, allowing the skin to harden up. Be sure to harvest before the first frost though! Cut your pumpkin on the stem, leaving a couple of inches of stem attached to the pumpkin. Check back in on this page in autumn for pumpkin recipes and carving templates!

Top Tips

• Pumpkins may start to rot if they are sitting on wet ground so try lifting them off the floor, maybe with a wooden board, plastic tray or anything else you have to hand that is flat and waterproof!
• Your pumpkin plant needs lots of sun to ripen, so you can cut off any large leaves that are casting shade over the pumpkins.
• Keep slugs and snails away from your pumpkin with slug barrier pellets or snail & slug traps planted nearby.

If you want you pumpkin to grow to be the very biggest it can be, you just need to do a few things!

Submit your photos below to be in with a chance of winning a Westland gardening bundle worth €250! We’d love to see photos of the entire gardening journey, from tiny seedlings to huge pumpkins, and everything that happens in between.

We’ll be choosing a winner at the end of the growing season, so submit as many photos as you like throughout your growing journey!

Terms & Conditions

These Terms and Conditions prevail in the event of any conflict or inconsistency with any other communications, including advertising or promotional materials. Entry and claim instructions are deemed to form part of the terms and conditions and by participating all claimants will be deemed to have accepted and be bound by the terms and conditions. Please retain a copy for your information.

1. Promoter: Westland Horticulture Limited, 14 Granville Industrial Estate, Granville Road, Dungannon, Co Tyrone, BT70 1NJ. 2. Eligibility: The draw is open to all UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and ROI residents who are 18 years or over excluding employees and their immediate families of Westland Horticulture Limited, its agents, retailers or anyone professionally connected with this promotion. 3. Promotional Period: The competition opens for the receipt of entries 29th May 2024 at 8am and closes at midnight on Friday 1st December 2024.  The draw will take place within a month after the closing date. 4. Entry Instructions: Entry is made by completing the form on the GardenHealth website on /caring-for-your-pumpkin-bord-bia-bloom page. The Promoter takes no responsibility for entries or claims delayed, incomplete or lost due to technical reasons or otherwise. Bulk entries made from trade, consumer groups or third parties will not be accepted. Incomplete or illegible entries or via third parties or syndicates, entries by macros or other automated means and entries which do not satisfy the requirements of these terms and conditions in full will be disqualified. If it becomes apparent that a participant is using a computer(s) or multiple aliases to circumvent this condition by, for example, the use of ‘script’, ‘brute force’, masking their identity by manipulating IP addresses, using identities other than their own or any other automated means in order to increase that participant’s entries into the Promotion in a way that is not consistent with the spirit of the Promotion, that person’s entries will be disqualified and any prize award will be void. No purchase necessary. 5. The Prize: 1 x Bundle of gardening products including lawn care, tplant feeds, compost, indoor etc worth €250. 6. Winner Selection: There will be one (1) winner selected in total based on the images submitted. The Westland Horticulture team will review all images submitted and one favourite will be chosen by the team based on personal preference 7. Winner Notification: The successful winner will be notified via the email address that is submitted on the form, and will have 5 days to claim. In order to claim a prize the promoter may ask for a copy of your passport proving your legal name at the time of entry, both must match in order to validate a prize. In the event of a non-claim the promoter reserves the right to reallocate the prize with no liability. 8. General: No responsibility can be taken for entries or claims which are lost, delayed, corrupted, damaged, misdirected or incomplete or cannot be delivered for any technical, delivery or other reason. Proof of sending will not be accepted as proof of receipt. There are no cash alternatives to the prizes available in whole or in part except in the event of circumstances outside its control the Promoter reserves the right to substitute a similar alternative of equal or greater value. Unless otherwise agreed in writing by the Promoter the prize will only be awarded directly to the winner. The Promoter does not guarantee continuous uninterrupted or secure access to the website. Numerous factors outside the control of the Promoter may interfere with the operation of the Website. No responsibility will be accepted for any difficulties in entering or any entries delayed or corrupted. The decisions of the Promoter are final in all promotional matters. For winner(s) full names and counties please write to the promoter within 3 months of the closing date enclosing a self-addressed envelope, please mark your envelope for the attention of the Marketing Department. In the event of circumstances outside the reasonable control of the promoter, or otherwise where fraud, abuse, and/or an error (human or computer) affects or could affect the proper operation of this promotion or the awarding of prizes, and only where circumstances make this unavoidable, the Promoter reserves the right to cancel or amend the promotion or these terms and conditions , at any stage, but will always endeavour to minimize the effect to participants in order to avoid undue disappointment. The Promoter and its associated agencies and companies accept no liability for any loss, expense or damage which is suffered or sustained (whether or not arising from any person’s negligence) in connection with the Promotion and/or prizes, other than such liability that cannot be excluded by law including death or personal injury through negligence, where liability shall be limited to the minimum permissible by law. By entering the draw, entrants will be deemed to be bound by and have accepted the terms and condition. By entering the draw entrants consent to being contacted by Kent & Stowe on behalf of Westland Horticulture Ltd and its brands for the purpose of being informed of news, products & promotions. If selected, each individual grants Kent & Stowe on behalf of Westland Horticulture Ltd and its agents the right to use their name and county in any publicity carried out by Kent & Stowe on behalf of Westland Horticulture in any and all media worldwide now known or hereinafter developed, for a fixed period of five years and without further consideration or notice to the participant. Any question concerning the legal interpretation of the rules will be based on Northern Ireland law and the Northern Ireland Courts will have exclusive jurisdiction. If any of these clauses should be determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable then it shall be severed and deleted from these terms and conditions and the remaining clauses shall survive and remain in full force and effect.