Nea writes:

“I live in the Caribbean and pumpkins are a staple crop here. They grow EVERYWHERE, even in extremely poor soil that you would think would grow nothing, like construction sites that are saturated with concrete runoff. The local knowledge explains that pumpkins like to hide, and be stepped on. I.e., you should not keep the weeds down around the vines, in fact the opposite; let the pumpkins hide amongst the grass. Also, stepping on the vines helps them. Since the pumpkin vines here get massive and out of control, it’s usually hard to avoid stepping on them….

Honestly, I have actually found that both of these things help. When I keep weeds down and avoid stepping on the vines, the pumpkins rarely produce and then never very much. When I let them hide and step wherever I may, they prolifically produce massive pumpkins!”

I have seen pumpkins in odd places. Never thought that stopping weeding or stepping on the vines would help, though. I wonder if it increases rooting at the nodes.