GardenPumpkin variety
Prizewinner Pumpkin
✓ In your garden
Prizewinner is a giant pumpkin, ready in about 120 days. It’s grown for carving and display — big, bold, and long-vining. Give it plenty of space and a long, warm season, and cure it in the sun before fall.
“A pumpkin grown for carving and show, not the plate.”
Growing basics — shared by every pumpkin
Prizewinner grows like any other pumpkin. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Pumpkin page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 36–48 in
- Row spacing
- 72–96 in
- Planting depth
- 0.5–1.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–6.5
- Water
- Moderate
What is Prizewinner good for?
- Carving & displayThis is the job. Great
- Cooking & pieWatery and stringy — pie pumpkins are better. Skip it
- Roasted seedsScoop, salt, and roast them. Great
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
—
Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Prizewinner in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around late Aug, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Toughen up outside
- mid Apr – late Apr
- Move plants outside
- late Apr – early May
- Plant seeds outside
- late Apr – early May
- Growing
- early May – late Aug
- Picking
- late Aug – early Sep
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Prizewinner — the things that trip people up
- Let it ripen fully on the vine — a rind you can’t dent with a thumbnail — then cut with a bit of stem and cure in the sun a week or two before storing.
- These are long-season, space-hungry vines. Give them a long warm summer, rich soil, and room to run, and watch for squash bugs and vine borers.
Prizewinner pumpkin at a glance
| Type | Giant |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 120 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Orange |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
Save it and the plant lights up — kept right here in your browser, no account needed. It's the first thing GardenTrack starts remembering for you.
Kept on this device. Want it safe if your browser clears or you switch phones? Back it up free — just your email, no password.
GardenTrack is in beta now — it'll remember every plant you add here and tell you what to do and when. One email, no spam.
Common questions about Prizewinner
How long does Prizewinner take to grow?
About 120 days to a fully mature fruit — a long-season crop, so start it early enough to beat your first fall frost.
How do I store Prizewinner?
Cure it in the sun for a week or two after harvest, then keep it somewhere cool and dry (not the fridge). Well-cured winter squash keeps for months.
Browse more pumpkin varieties →