Ripening Green Pumpkins is something we have to do every few years. Sometimes you just don’t have enough time in the fall for the last of your pumpkins to ripen. But it is actually a simple process to ripen green pumpkins.
It happens every few years around our place. You know the type of year when the frost and the cold come early and you just have to break down and bring in your pumpkins before they have fully ripened.
Pumpkins can take a light frost or two and be okay, but once the foliage on your pumpkin plant has been killed by the frost there really isn’t a reason to leave the green pumpkins out in the garden. A really hard freeze could really damage those green pumpkins.
Ripening Green Pumpkins
The process for ripening green pumpkins is really quite simple. You just need a sunny spot where you don’t need to worry about your green pumpkins freezing. For us, that perfect spot is a south-facing window either in the garage or inside the house. All they really need is exposure to a few weeks of nice warm sunshine and they will ripen up!
Plenty of pumpkin pie coming from this beauty. This one weighed in at 27 lbs when we finally brought it in from ripening in the sunny window in the garage. We weren’t sure if this one would ripen, it was very green when we brought it in from the garden the night before our first hard freeze.
Only 3 weeks in the sun was all it took. We end up doing this every few years. Our wet cold spring set all our plants back several weeks so this one just didn’t quite get done before the frost.
Keep in mind when you are ripening green pumpkins that they won’t be as good of quality as a vine-ripened pumpkin. Like many other veggies ripened green pumpkins will be of lower overall taste and quality. But this one was PERFECT for a nice Halloween Jack-O-Lantern! And most of the seeds were usable for roasting.
Organic method for controlling fruit flies
I had to ripen all my pumpkins off the vine this year too. Not a good year for the winter squashes. The first one was ready today and we had it for dinner – Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good. Lovely stuff!
My first pumpkin plant only gave one real good pumpkin. Here it is almost mid October and it is still very green, getting worried rather we will have a pumpkin for Halloween and then pie later on. Not getting a lot of sunshine like in past years when we had nice warm weather through October until latest part of the month. Need some quick advice, promised my 3 year old grandson he would have a pumpkin for Halloween and then grandma would cook it afterwards for pie and or soups and breads. Help…………
I would need to know roughly where you live, or at least your garden zone and what your temperatures are like right now. Ripening inside usually takes at least a couple of weeks so you are pushing it for Halloween. If you haven’t had frost yet you may be better off leaving it outside if your daytime temps are still nice and warm. Also, I’m not sure what variety you planted, but usually Jack-O-Lantern type pumpkins don’t make a very good pie, soup or bread. If you really plan on eating them you should opt for a “Pie Pumpkin” variety. Not to discourage you, what you have is for sure eatable but you will most likely find it stringy and maybe a bit bland.