Helping the home gardener succeed

One of the problems you may run into with growing your own food is simply having too much of it! You can only eat and give away so much, so an alternative is canning or preserving it! By canning your own fruits and veggies, you can save money and learn how to be almost completely self-reliant concerning food. When you really break it down, canning is just food science. When you preserve food, you are basically freezing time.

So, the hard part is over, right? Getting seeds to germinate and keeping them alive long enough to admire them is a rush… but now what to do? They’re going to keep getting bigger, and we know that the small peat pots they’re in aren’t going to do the trick forever. Well, this is where transplanting comes in.

If you have ever visited the agricultural exhibits at your county or state fair and wondered how to grow giant pumpkins, our guide below can take you from planting pumpkin seeds to a first-place finish this fall. The secret? Choosing the right variety of pumpkin seeds—and committing to hands-on gardening techniques to pile on the pounds.