Business Ideas | Small Business Ideas: How to Farm Pumpkins For Business

Start a pumpkin farm to grow and harvest pumpkins during the autumn months. Farms often allow customers to pick their own pumpkins for decorating or to use to make comfort foods, including hearty soups and flavorful pies. Plant pumpkin seeds in the late spring or early summer, depending on the climate where your farm is located, so pumpkins can be harvested close to Halloween.

Step 1

Register your pumpkin farm business with the county clerk's office if forming a sole proprietorship, and the secretary of state's office if forming a corporation, partnership or limited liability company. Apply for an Employer Identification Number, or EIN, to use on all business, tax, banking and other documents through the Internal Revenue Service. Apply for a sales tax number through the department of revenue to collect sales tax from customers.

Step 2

Contact your state's department of agriculture to apply for a license or permit to sell fresh produce. In Texas, for example, you must apply for a license to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to customers, retailers and wholesale vendors. You must renew this license yearly with the Texas Department of Agriculture.

Step 3

Lease or purchase farm land to grow pumpkins. The amount of land needed depends on the number of pumpkins you plan to grow and the types of growing techniques you plan on using. If planting pumpkin vines, you need to create a series of 50- to 100-foot-wide mounds with approximately 5 to 6 feet between each mound. Each mound typically yields four to five pumpkins. If planting pumpkin bushes, you need to plant rows of pumpkin seeds, leaving approximately 3 feet between seeds and up to 8 feet between rows. Contact a commercial real estate agent to help find farm land large enough to grow pumpkins. Your farm should be easy for customers to find and include an area for parking.

Step 4

Purchase pumpkin seeds and farming equipment such as a small tractor, digging and planting tools, an irrigation or sprinkler system and insecticide. Build an outdoor structure to create a place to greet customers, hand out pumpkin baskets, provide snacks and drinks, and sell pumpkins.

Step 5

Advertise your pumpkin farm a month or two before the crop is ready for picking. Post fliers in high-traffic areas such as grocery stores, parks and community centers. Place ads in local newspapers or tourist magazines or purchase ad space on the radio or television. Create a Facebook page or a website that includes directions, pricing information and a description of the farm.

Tips

Hand out maps of the farm to customers outlining the types of pumpkins and where they're located.
Provide additional activities such as scavenger hunts, mazes or haunted houses to attract more customers.

Warning

Purchase business insurance to cover the costs associated with an accident or injury to customers, employees and others on your property. Coverage should include liability, commercial property, workers' compensation and farm equipment.

Things to remember in pumpkin farms

Remember that pumpkins need to be harvested before the first hard frost otherwise the frost will kill the vines and also destroy the pumpkins. It is also important that you provide a complete fence around the farm or else the wild animals will not spare your farm and of course the pumpkins. So you need to save your farm from such animals. The other thing is to give attention to the pests and diseases of the plants so keep spreading pesticides in the farm as and when the requirement comes.

Every week a growing pumpkin will be requiring one to two inches of rainfall, lack of water can prove disastrous for your crops. Make certain that there is an effective water supply in your farm. You also need to regularly apply fertilisers to your farm but try not to over fertilise the farm as it may be harmful.

Proper Checking of the Soil and Climate is Required

The first step should be to check the soil quality and the ph value of the soil. It should be somewhere around 6.0 to 6.8 ph value. Pumpkins need a very rich soil that is capable of draining. Further when you choose the farm land keep in view that it must be able to get a large amount of sunlight, pumpkins require extensive sunlight or else they may not be able to grow properly. For proper growth they require the perfect combination of manure and compost, so you need to be careful with that. Pumpkins require a large number of nutrients in the soil. You can start sowing the pumpkin seeds somewhere in mid- May and try to see that the temperature remains fairly warm all throughout or else the growth might be retarded.

Pumpkins are known to spread far and wide; their roots may spread to as much as 15 feet in all directions. Make sure when farming your pumpkins that you have to prevent them from chilly winds so never try to farm pumpkins in areas of excessive cold. But if you intend to use farm them in chilly areas then you will have to use cloches and floating row covers to protect the plants from winter.

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About the Author

Based in the Washington metro area, Jessica Jones has been a freelance writer since 2006, specializing in business topics. Her fiction has also been featured in publications such as "The Jamaican Observer Sunday Literary Supplement" and at websites including HackWriters. Jones earned a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Lesley University.

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

How to Farm Pumpkins For Business | Pumpkin Farming Business