Seminole Pumpkins: Yes, Edible Pumpkins in Central Florida!
- Sam Gordon
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
3rd of the Elite 8 Produce Plants for Orlando
If you’ve spent a decent amount of time Florida, you’ve come across a Seminole fan. And while Seminole football fans strike up controversy, every Floridian should get on board with Seminole pumpkin fans. Seminole Pumpkins are sweet and hard to distinguish from butternut squash. In fact, they are the same species, Cucurbita Moschata, just a different variety and they love the sunshine and sandy soil, attributes of Florida that pose challenges to Floridian vegetable gardeners.
These are one of the vegetables I would recommend growing through the summer along with sweet potato, okra, luffa, everglades tomatoes, and there are certainly many more that could land on this list. I believe these pumpkins could be grown 12 months of the year in Orlando. However, freezes in the winter and overbearing heat on the other side of the coin could kill your crop. Two great times to plant Seminole pumpkins in my opinion would be October and the third week of February as these dates mark changes to more moderate temperatures. Pumpkins do not handle transplanting as well as other crops, therefore direct seeding or transplanting before the plants get too large could be the way to go. Whether you plan to grow a couple seminole pump.'s here and there, grow them vertically over a trellis, or on the ground in a big row, I would allocate about a 40 square foot area for them to expand (about 6'x6').
Once your pumpkins get about 3 foot long, I would begin pruning the tips of your runners. About every week, when the runners are 3-4 nodes long, I would regularly tip these runners. This is a similar concept to mangoes. Every year, mangoes grow off of new branches. Pruning can cause a branch or runner to split from 1 branch to 3 or 4, thus more fruit can be held by the tree. Back to pumpkins, pruning as described will increase runners and the total area of your vine. Flowers on pumpkins are grow at the nodes. The more nodes, the more flowers.
Okay, so you've got some flowers. Pumpkins are monoecious (1). This means that male and female sex parts don't grow in the same flower (hermaphroditic), instead there are male and female flowers on the same plant.
Hermaphroditic: male and female parts are in the same flower (most crops)
Monoecious: Separate Male and female flowers on same plant (squash, bananas, jackfruit,...)
Dioecious: A plant only grows either male or female flowers, thus needs cross pollination with another plant of the opposite sex. (Less than 5% of plants are this way.)
Anyway, so you've got your female and male flowers. Three things come to mind here:
Hand pollination: Take a male flower off the plant. A male flower will look like a green stem going to a yellow flower. It won't have a green bulb in between like a female flower. Peel the petals back and then apply the pollen to the stigma sticking out in the female flowers. Pollinating between different plant (cross-pollination) is recommended for increasing biodiversity and perhaps pollination success.
It'd be great to have pollinator plants or other produce plants flowering at this time to work together to increase fruit sets.
Planting an additional variety of pumpkin can increase pollination success from cross pollination.
Once flowers are pollinated, I haven't kept track well, but from research it seems that it takes about 50 days for successfully pollinated female flowers to turn into fruit. Once, the pumpkins have turned a sandy tan with a flush of orange, the pumpkins can be cured in the heat for a 10-14 days to increase shelf-life. Towards the end of the curing process, the skin should have become thicker and cuts should have healed.
Seminole pumpkins can be treated a lot like butternut squash or sugar pumpkins for recipes.
Sam’s Pointers
If you cure Seminole Pumpkins, they can store for a whole year.
Seminole pumpkin vines will reach over 10ft wide. After the plant is 3 ft long, I recommend pruning the branches every 4 nodes. This will increase the amount of suckers the Seminole pumpkin produces and its capacity for fruit.
Hard to kill, a backbone for you Florida garden.
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