Garden Guru: Red-hot results

If you take a little extra care when storing them, pumpkins will last for months. Photo / Nigel Marple

In their fat fiery bellies pumpkins embody everything that is good about autumn's plenty, yet despite their place in our culinary hearts, few gardeners have a serious stab at growing them.

The space issue is perhaps the biggest put-off. Many people think that even the incy-wincy boutique sorts - streaked and dappled like tropical birds and masquerading under the name of gourds - need a garden the size of a small continent to do well. But if you grow the right sorts and have a few cultivation tricks up your sleeve, an average-sized plot is fine.

Most pumpkins, squash and gourds - members of the twining cucumber family - will happily climb if given some firm encouragement. The decorative gourds take up next to little space if you get them to colonise an arch where the fruits hanging down, perhaps mixed with sweetpeas and runner beans, make an amazing feature for a vegetable garden.

Sporting such tantalising names as Caveman's Club, Crown of Thorns, Turk's Turban and Speckled Swan, these are grown for looks and not for eating for the flesh can be bland and stringy. But they're worth it if you want to impress the kids and have something fancy to decorate a bowl.

In the average garden, squash such as butternut won't take over your life and are a useful size to chop for soups and roasts.

Not all varieties will climb but by gently tying shoots - use soft twine - in the direction you want them to roam most will attempt to get airborne on a stout trellis.

Some inherit the streaked and speckled good looks of the gourds, such as Delicata, which is striped green on cream, and Triamble, a three-lobed heirloom variety with tasty orange flesh and good keeping properties.

Pink Banana Jumbo is large with an elongated torso which lends it to easy slicing. A clever place to plant these is on top of an ageing compost heap for all squash love a rich soil and plenty of summer moisture.

As well as being fertile, compost areas are often in out of the way corners which can happily be invaded for a few months in late summer.

In America, the traditional way to grow pumpkins was inter-planted with corn and beans. The idea was that the beans used the corn to twine upwards, while the pumpkins rambled about filling the gaps beneath - three crops taking up the space of one.

In a similar way you could allow these autumn wonders to hoist themselves over and between existing shrubs in the ornamental garden or take over a corner of the deck which doesn't get used much.

Few of the true pumpkins combine good taste with compact habit. Red Kuri is perhaps the best. It has fruit of a classic pumpkin shape and colour but scaled down to a handy size so one fruit is just enough for a family meal. The flesh is sweet and moist and the skin is thin enough to eat after roasting.

To mature properly so that they keep, pumpkins need three or four months of hot sunny weather so it's best to start them off as early in spring as possible.

The best way to further limit the size of plants is to pinch out all the growing tips and any new flowers after each has produced three or four good-sized fruits. This keeps the plants compact and improves the size and quality of the fruit.

In late summer, excess leaves should be cut away to expose the fruit to maximum sunshine.

Unless you are growing them to eat right away, leave fruits on the plant for as long as possible. The skin of mature pumpkins will begin to crack as will the stems when they are ripe. Remove them with a good piece of stem still attached.

After picking, put them to bake against a sunny wall for at least two weeks, bringing them in if there's a hint of frost or store them in a warm sunny room. After that, your fat harvest should be kept in a well-ventilated space indoors, ideally at about 8C.

Kings Seeds and the Koanga Institute have a good selection of pumpkins.

Could do this week:

* Cuttings of many shrubs such as lavender, rosemary, hebe, choisya and fuchsias can be taken now. A large, clear plastic container or even an empty drink bottle with the bottom removed can act as a humid propagation case, but make sure you keep them sited out of direct sunlight.
* The garden may still need water, but if the ground is moist you can begin shifting perennials and shrubs about. Many perennials such as achilleas, daylilies, bergenias and asters enjoy being divided to reinvigorate them and encourage better flowering for the next year.
* Vegetables that can be planted now include broadbeans, beetroot, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, leeks, lettuce, onions, peas, radish, silverbeet, spinach and swede.
* Now is the perfect time for sowing new lawns, and rejuvenating old ones by spraying them with a weed-and-feed mixture.