If seeing fall pumpkins makes you want to grow your own next summer, it's best to plan ahead. Not all pumpkin varieties do well in the South. The key to success for this variety is resistance to the most common and damaging pumpkin disease, powdery mildew.
Powdery mildew shows up as white, dusty spots on both the top and undersides of leaves.
These spots spread rapidly and soon cover large areas of the leaves, which then yellow and shrivel. It also produces a good number of fruit per vine, averaging 15 pounds apiece under S.C. conditions. These varieties produce small fruit, generally about 5 pounds apiece. The giant pumpkins are also partially resistant to another pumpkin disease, downy mildew, which kills vines in wet weather. Downy mildew starts as hundreds of small yellow flecks on leaves.