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This year I decided to try trellising my pumpkins and am wondering about the impact this might have on the fruit, since the vines won't be putting down roots as they run. Does anyone have experience with this, or know how much fertiliser I should add to compensate?
I have good quality soil, but was planning to amend my fertilising schedule to compensate. Is this even needed? I'm not looking for huge fruits, but will still be limiting vines to 1 fruit per vine.
No. Fertilizing too heavily promotes the wrong kind of growth. I've found that pumpkins grow better on black plastic than on a compost mulch (both growing in the same soil). This may have something to do with my untropical climate, but it shows that the node roots are not absolutely necessary for good growth. The only pumpkin I've grown on a trellis was Jack-Be-Little, but the vines produced at least as much, if not more than the ground grown plants, with the same fertilizing schedule. I also had no squash vine borers on the climbing vines.
