When shall I pick my pumpkins?

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

The plant its still healthy and growing. Pumpkins are ripening nicely. Bit of a frost last night and I've no idea when to pick them.

Right now if you're likely to get any more frost - they get spoiled by anything more than the tiniest touch

Thanks Takver - I will pick them today. Some of the leaves do actually look frost hit now.

Can they stay outside or in the garage for a couple of weeks? - two of them are pretty enormous. (was very fun going into garden centre this afternoon and scoffing at tall the 'giant' pumpkins.

How do you curtail the growth of the plants? Ours made 17m long in the end almost the entire length of garden. All that and we only got 3 pumpkins.

I picked mine about 3 weeks ago - they were huge, very orange and looked like they were done. They are happily residing in my shed and one has had an outing to school and back.

I can't bear the thought of carving them

We got 2 decent sized ones from two plants - in the end I cut off most of the vines except the ones that had these pumpkins on.