Pumpkin

Meet the pumpkin, one of the biggest things you can grow from a single seed. In a few weeks a single plant puts out long, rough-leaved vines with big yellow flowers, and by the end of the season a handful of round, heavy fruit sits among the leaves.

Its character is generous and a little greedy. It wants sun, a patch of its own and steady water, and it will fill a bed in a few weeks. It also takes its time: four to six months from sowing to a ripe fruit.

What it brings is a vegetable that stores. Whole pumpkins can be stored in a cool, dry place, and a single plant gives you soups, curries and roasts for a season. It is also a crop for patient gardeners who plan the year around the Ministry's two windows.

Pumpkin has two windows in Dubai. The UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment's calendar lists nursery sowing in February to March and again in September to October, with field planting in March to April and September to November, and gives 180 days to harvest. BBC Good Food Middle East lists pumpkins for May to June in the hot season, grown with shade cloth and careful watering, and two Dubai gardeners quoted by Gulf News list pumpkins among the warm-weather crops that need more warmth and sun and can thrive in winter with planning. It is a slow crop, so pick a window and commit.

'Pumpkin' is a trade word for the round, orange-fleshed squash of several Cucurbita species (Wikipedia). This page follows Cucurbita moschata, whose cultivars Wikipedia says are generally more tolerant of hot, humid weather than other domesticated squash; the same care applies to the others. UF/IFAS says pumpkins take about four months to grow, and mature in about 100 days when planted in late March and early April, while those planted from late April to July produce smaller fruit and suffer virus, fungal disease and fruit-set problems. It also says that smaller 'pie' or sugar pumpkins, around 6 to 7 pounds, are best for cooking, and that big carving types are bred for looks, not taste.

Space is the main design decision. The Grow Your Food guide that The National published with Dubai Municipality says melons, marrows and pumpkins really need a patch of ground of their own, and UF/IFAS says Seminole pumpkin vines can run up to 25 feet (7.6 m). A Gulf News feature on balcony gardens says squash can grow in 20-gallon containers. FAO rates pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) as moderately sensitive to salt, an estimate rather than a measured threshold, so use mains water on a drip line and fill the bed with sweet soil.