How to prepare pumpkin seeds for sowing

Pumpkin is loved by both adults and children; its delicate, amazing taste and beneficial properties can leave few people indifferent. At the same time, the abundance of recipes that can be used to prepare the fruit in an interesting way is amazing. Growing crops in the garden is not particularly difficult, however, in order to get strong and strong plants, and subsequently a good harvest, you need to properly plant pumpkin seeds in open ground.

Note! The rules for preparing a site and choosing a location also apply to planting seedlings in a garden bed.

What are the benefits of pre-sowing treatment?

Very often, gardeners asking themselves the question: why do we need pre-sowing preparation if the seeds germinate well when sown dry? Yes, pumpkin seeds germinate quite quickly when planted in the ground, and good seedlings grow from them. But thanks to processing, you can achieve the following results:

Resistance to adverse weather conditions will increase. Plants will be less sensitive to temperature changes.
The likelihood of diseases transmitted through seed material will decrease.
The seedlings will emerge almost simultaneously. If you germinate the seeds in advance, you can achieve 100% germination.

How to choose quality pumpkin seeds

When purchasing seeds at a gardening store, it is recommended to give preference to well-known manufacturers who have a lot of positive customer reviews and have been working on the market for a long time. First of all, pay attention to the packaging, which must include the following information: name of the variety and its characteristics, recommendations for cultivation, advice on choosing planting dates, date of seed collection, expiration date and contact information.

Particular attention should be paid to the “expiration date” column. You should not buy expired seeds - they most likely will not sprout.

It is necessary to carefully inspect the packaging - it should not be damaged or heavily soiled. These signs indicate a violation of the conditions of transportation and storage. A wrinkled package may contain damaged seeds.

For sowing, it is recommended to use seeds at least two years old. It is believed that fresh seeds produce bushes with a large amount of “barren flowers”; female flowers appear late.

How to care for pumpkins in open ground: recommendations, tips

Planting pumpkins isn't everything. It is important to care for her properly. Despite the fact that the culture is not too whimsical, it requires timely watering. The fact is that its root system is large. The pumpkin receives all its nutrition from the mail at all stages of growth. Watering is carried out near the base of the plant, that is, at the root. The plant especially needs moisture in hot weather or drought.

Please note that during the ripening period of pumpkins, watering should be moderate, because at this time the fruits ripen and gain flavor.

Another important stage of care is removing weeds and fertilizing. The latter is carried out in several stages. The first should be carried out when the seedling has three pairs of leaves, and the second - during the formation of lashes. Nitrophoska is used for this procedure. For the first feeding you need 10 g, and for the second - 15 g. This is the amount for one pumpkin bush.

You can’t do without loosening during maintenance. Try not to have a crust appear on the ground under the plant. Regular loosening helps maintain the softness of the soil and also provide aeration to the rhizome.

Don’t forget about the formation of stems. The fact is that at first the pumpkin grows very quickly, and since it is spreading, it is important to maintain boundaries for it. To do this, bushes are formed during the blooming of the lashes. Before the first inflorescences appear, pinch the bud at the top of the shoot. Then your side shoots will begin to grow. Those that grow in the “sinus” must be removed when they reach a size of 5-7 cm.

Such measures do not allow the pumpkin to waste energy on extra leaves. All energy is redirected directly to growing pumpkin fruits.

Selection of quality seeds

Soaking in water is the easiest way to select “viable” seeds. “Dummy” seeds almost always float to the surface, while high-quality seeds sink to the bottom of the dish. The procedure is carried out according to the following scheme:

They carefully inspect the seed material and select the most beautiful, even and thick seeds for planting. It is not recommended to use flat, small or damaged specimens.
Pour pumpkin seeds into a glass of water and then gently stir with a spoon. After 3-4 hours, the floating seeds are removed and discarded. Those that have sunk to the bottom of the container are suitable for planting.

How long do sunflower seeds last?

This species is more finicky, so it is important to create optimal conditions for it, as described above. Any violations lead to the fact that the shelf life is reduced significantly. Here you need to remember the following:

Under ideal conditions - a temperature of +7°C and a humidity of 7%, the seeds are stored for a year.
In a cool, dark place with low humidity and good ventilation - from 6 to 9 months.
If you put the seeds in the fruit compartment of the refrigerator, they can be stored normally for up to 1 year.
The peeled seeds should be placed in a paper bag and placed in the fruit compartment. Use within 3 months.

Important! It is better not to store these seeds for a very long time and use them as needed. Remember that at least once a month you need to open the bags or bags and monitor the condition of the seeds.

Germination

The easiest way to speed up the germination of pumpkin seeds is to wrap them in a damp cloth. In such conditions, the grains will be saturated with moisture and germinate fairly quickly.

This is done like this:

Prepare a piece of fabric (or cotton pads), as well as a container with a lid.
The material is soaked in water and then lightly squeezed.
Wrap the seeds in a damp cloth, place them in a container, and then cover with a lid.
Leave in a warm room (not lower than room temperature) until sprouts appear.
Germinated seeds are planted as seedlings or immediately sown in the garden bed.

Do not allow the material to dry out - as it dries, spray the fabric with water.

Seed selection and preparation

The stores offer a wide selection of pumpkin seeds of various varieties, but gardeners who plant pumpkins every year usually use seeds from their own harvest, only sometimes buying beautiful bags of unknown varieties for fun. This makes sense: unlike many other crops, pumpkin seeds are very easy to collect, they store well, and the quality of the fruits of the old, established varieties is quite high, and it is not always worth spending money on buying seeds. But if the seeds were bought in a store, most likely they should be trusted so much that you don’t need to waste time preparing them for sowing; Moreover, often seeds from well-known companies are already fully prepared; they simply need to be “consigned to the ground” in a timely manner.

How to collect pumpkin seeds

The pumpkin does not always have time to fully ripen in the garden, and some late-ripening varieties “reach” during storage. Unfortunately, this only applies to the pulp: if the seeds have not had time to ripen under natural conditions, they will be unsuitable for sowing. For seeds, you can only use pumpkins that are fully ripened in the garden. These must be healthy specimens, uniform in color, correct shape and size, characteristic of a particular variety.

If pumpkin cultivation for seeds is carried out purposefully, then there is no need to apply excess fertilizer to the corresponding bushes; this somewhat shortens the growing season. Since pumpkin plants easily cross-pollinate, it is undesirable to have other varieties of pumpkins, zucchini, and even cucumbers planted nearby.

Seed pumpkins even need to be stored correctly until the seeds are extracted from them. You should not cut them right away; you should let them sit at room temperature for about a month. It’s not worth it any longer: the seeds may begin to germinate already inside the fruit. If you miss this moment, you will have to say goodbye to the seeds.

Unlike watermelon, pumpkin seeds are not distributed throughout the fruit, but are located in the seed chamber, which in different varieties is located either in the center or on one side, but in any case it is large. Therefore, when cutting a pumpkin, you don’t have to be afraid of damaging a lot of seeds, but you should still do it carefully, after washing the pumpkin and wiping it dry. You need to use a sharp, durable knife and do not stick it deep.

Usually the seeds are easily separated from the pulp, but some of them, especially those that are not fully ripe, may be heavily surrounded by it. If possible, they are separated from the pulp manually, placed in any container, and then washed well with running water at room temperature. Sometimes you have to use a sieve to separate the seeds from the fibers. Bad seeds can be separated immediately by filling everything extracted with water: what floats up is thrown away.

Everyone is very familiar with pumpkin seeds: they are large and easy to work with.

After sorting the seeds, they are well dried at room temperature and sent for storage. It is best to keep them in a paper or linen bag, but most importantly, at constant room temperature and low humidity.

Shelf life of seeds and germination testing

Proper storage of pumpkin seeds guarantees their germination for 7–8 years. Moreover, there is no need to try to plant last year’s seeds: they give the best results in terms of germination and yield when they reach the age of 3–4 years. They always collect a lot of their own seeds, so before preparing them for planting, you just need to manually calibrate them, choosing the largest and densest, “potbellied” ones.

If you have doubts about the correct storage, you can check the seeds for germination. To do this, take as many seeds as they can afford, but at least a dozen. Germination is carried out in the usual way: spread a napkin or piece of cloth on a plate, lay out the seeds and pour in enough water to just cover them. Place the plate in a warm place and make sure that the napkin is wet all the time, adding water little by little.

The seeds first swell, then burst a little at the tip, and a tail appears from there. True, this could happen in three days, or in eight. Therefore, the experiment ends in ten days. If out of a dozen seeds only one does not germinate, great. If 2-3 is normal. Otherwise, it is better to purchase new seeds, although if every second one has sprouted, you can sow them too, but with a reserve.

Video: checking pumpkin seeds for germination

Soaking and germination of seeds

Pumpkin seeds are often planted dry, straight from the bag. Sometimes the package even says that they are ready for sowing. They often soak their own seeds before sowing, or even germinate them. It’s hard to argue whether this makes much sense, but such preparation brings the harvest closer by a few days. In addition, sprouted seeds become less tasty and attractive to pests, which means that the germination rate increases. But if you are to prepare the seeds for sowing, then the first operation should be their disinfection - a half-hour bath in a dark solution of potassium permanganate.

How to speed up seed germination

Germinating pumpkin seeds is far from the only stage in preparing planting material for planting. There are several more equally effective and not very complicated techniques, for example:

warming up is the simplest method, in which the seeds are laid out on a well-lit windowsill in clear weather and warmed by sunlight all day, carrying out this treatment for at least a week. Instead, you can warm them up for 3–4 hours at a temperature of 60 °C;
treatment with fertilizer solutions: this can be simply an infusion of 2 tablespoons of ash in a liter of water or a more complex mixture made by adding 0.5 g of boric acid, the same amount of zinc sulfate and copper sulfate to this infusion. The seeds are kept in the solution for 5–7 hours;
treatment with biostimulants: for this purpose, it is easiest to use a solution containing 0.5 g of salicylic or succinic acid in 1 liter of water. An excellent natural stimulant is agave juice, which is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:10. The seeds are also kept in such solutions for 5–7 hours. It is believed that this not only improves and accelerates germination, but also increases the quantity and quality of the future harvest.

Possible reasons why seeds do not germinate

Problems with germination of pumpkin seeds are extremely rare. If you checked the seeds in advance for suitability, they are simply bound to sprout. Maybe not in 4 days, but in 10–12 days, but they will sprout! Especially if they were sown dry. Paradox? No. There is, perhaps, only one reason that suitable dry seeds did not germinate. They were eaten by pests. Either underground spider bugs or birds dug it up.

But with soaked or sprouted seeds it’s more difficult. If after sowing it suddenly gets cold and the soil temperature drops below 8 ° C, it means that your seeds, which were just beginning to live, simply died from the cold. Well, if there was no cold, perhaps they simply dried out: if germinated seeds are sown, conditions of sufficient heat and high humidity must be created in the hole.

There are many examples of when one gardener was shaking over the seeds, wasted a lot of time, waiting, but there were no shoots. A neighbor came over on the weekend, buried dry seeds, and they sprouted perfectly. If, of course, the ground was warm and moderately moist. Therefore, it is worth recognizing that for pumpkin, preliminary preparation of seeds is not really necessary, and sometimes it only gets in the way.

Hardening

By hardening the seeds, the cold resistance of plants increases. This procedure is not required, but is still advisable to use.

Algorithm of actions:

The sprouted seeds are wrapped in a piece of damp cloth.
Transfer to the refrigerator on the bottom shelf, where the temperature is maintained at about +2 degrees. Do not allow it to drop to 0 degrees, otherwise the sprouts may freeze.
They are kept in such conditions for 3 to 5 days, and then planted in the ground.

Medicinal benefits of pumpkin seeds

Research shows that pumpkin seeds may reduce the risk of prostate and ovarian cancer. Experimental studies suggest that certain phytochemicals in pumpkin seed oil may play a role in preventing diabetic nephropathy (diabetic kidney disease).

The benefits of pumpkin seeds have long been known in folk medicine and have been confirmed experimentally and clinically. Pumpkin seeds contain its specific substance - the amino compound cucurbitin, which has an antiparasitic effect. It was also found that pumpkin seeds are low-toxic, unlike other remedies for helminthiasis.

Pumpkin seeds are used against tapeworms - tapeworms (bovine, pork, dwarf), broad tapeworms, pinworms.

For an antiparasitic effect, pumpkin seeds are taken on an empty stomach, following the doses:

The seeds can be ground in a mortar and 50-100 grams of honey added.

Important: during the peeling process, be sure to leave the green shell, since the anthelmintic cucurbitin is contained in it.

3 hours after administration, the patient is given a laxative, then after 0.5 hours an enema is given.

Planting seedlings

Sowing work is carried out 3 weeks before the expected date of transplantation into open ground. Fill the cups with nutrient soil to 2/3 of the volume, plant the seeds to a depth of 2-4 cm, and then water them with water. Cover with film and keep the cups with seeds in a warm place until shoots emerge. Then they are transferred to a lighted windowsill.

Proper seed preparation allows for successful seedlings. In the future, they will grow into strong and healthy plants that will develop well in the garden. As a result, the pumpkin bushes will reward you with a good harvest.

When to harvest fruits for seed collection?

Seed collection should occur exclusively from ripe fruits. That is why it is recommended to wait until the pumpkin is technically ripe. It is noteworthy that pumpkin is a fruit that can successfully ripen at home after harvesting. Remember, you should not allow the pumpkin mash to remain on the plot during freezing, as this can completely destroy the harvest.

How to determine the ripeness of a pumpkin? The stalk of each pumpkin should be dry and woody. The color of the fruit must be rich and fully correspond to the declared color. These criteria will indicate whether the fruit is ripe or not. Many people mistakenly believe that overripe fruits have first-class seeds - this is a myth. When overripe, seeds begin to germinate directly inside the fruit; accordingly, the growing season is disrupted, and these seeds cannot be used for sowing.