When farming pumpkins, do you remove the withered vines?

[Broccoli Clock]

Screenshot attached (in spoiler) but I'm guessing anyone who has grown pumpkins before will know what I'm talking about.

Spoiler

I've read the wiki, and I understand how they grow, and they definitely look cool, but for withered vines do you remove them or will they naturally disappear? The wiki explains why they exist, just not what to do with them. Considering the poor seed/plant ratio I'm wanting to be careful not to screw with the plant.

[LadyWYT]

I generally remove the withered vines. I don't know that it actually does anything, but I presume that by removing them, it frees up space for new vines to grow, and thus increases the chances of getting more pumpkins.

[Broccoli Clock]

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I generally remove the withered vines.

I was going to but was worried it might effect the plant. I'm going into winter so I guess they'll not be growing much anyway.

I'm happy to mark this as "solved".

 

[Never Jhonsen]

I'm the same way.

I always remove them myself, but IDK if it affects anything besides freeing up block space

[Thorfinn]

Have they changed pumpkins? Haven't grown them in quite a while, since they seem a little OP, but it used to be you wanted to grow them without fertilizer and on lousy soil so that they didn't go to withered so fast and had a chance to spread and form pumpkins.

[Maelstrom]

There might be a small (miniscule) chance a pumpkin will spawn after removing a withered vine.  A much better way to increase potential pumpkin yield - place a full block on the diagonal blocks from the field block the pumpkin is planted in.  Anecdotal evidence indicates a noticeable increase in pumpkin spawnage.

[Thorfinn]

Not following. Obviously, there is the water hole on one diagonal, so you don't need to place anything there, but are you saying to essentially grow pumpkins in a plot with the soil arranged only orthogonally? A grid? Might have to play around with that a bit. I'm getting a tad bored with my current world. Early August, currently 58 barrels of rot, but I'm only 11 days in on the oldest of it. Didn't get started as soon as I could have, I guess. And, really, I'm not going to need that TP anyway. The garden already has ~250 blocks of HFS. I'm mostly only planting stuff to keep the bees happy.

Edited March 27, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

I wasn't describing how to plant multiple pumpkins, just how to get a potentially higher yield from a single seed.  You still need to consider how to arrange multiple plantings to prevent overlap though.

[Thorfinn]

Right. I was speaking of a single plant. I can figure out tiling on my own. You are saying to make a square grid of dirt, kind of like a screen? They will send shoots only to blocks in cardinal directions? Have you noticed if it makes any difference if you don't have all 3 exits from a given block available? Could you just run a single row of dirt to make it spread in a line, instead of snaking around back on itself?

Or is this an "adapt the environment as it grows" kind of strategy?

[EDIT]

Oh, wait. Rereading that again, I think I maybe misunderstood. You are saying that you should essentially have a flat field of dirt, with only the one water tile and the one farmland tile?

Edited March 27, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Broccoli Clock]

A slight update to this, I did remove the withered vines (with a knife, it returned nothing) however the problem has sort of "resolved itself" ..

[dakko]

On 3/26/2025 at 7:38 PM, Thorfinn said:

I'm mostly only planting stuff to keep the bees happy.

Okay, so I hadn't realized bees noticed garden crops until you mentioned it recently. Do they only notice the flowering crops? That would make sense. I seem to recall something about flowering berry bushes counting as flowers for bees. But in any case, I planted crops and the bees don't recognize them (yet) while they do recognize the few decorative flowers that were also placed nearby.

[dakko]

26 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

A slight update to this, I did remove the withered vines (with a knife, it returned nothing) however the problem has sort of "resolved itself" ..

I think removing the withered vine would theoretically provide it with an option to sprout a new vine. Assuming of course that you haven't entered winter, but it sounds like you did!

[Maelstrom]

18 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Right. I was speaking of a single plant. I can figure out tiling on my own. You are saying to make a square grid of dirt, kind of like a screen? They will send shoots only to blocks in cardinal directions? Have you noticed if it makes any difference if you don't have all 3 exits from a given block available? Could you just run a single row of dirt to make it spread in a line, instead of snaking around back on itself?

Or is this an "adapt the environment as it grows" kind of strategy?

[EDIT]

Oh, wait. Rereading that again, I think I maybe misunderstood. You are saying that you should essentially have a flat field of dirt, with only the one water tile and the one farmland tile?

You are way, WAY overthinking this.  All I'm saying to do is plant a punkin seed then place a full block (i.e. cobblestone) on the blocks diagonal to the planted seed.  Yes, a water source under one of those.  That is it.  Nothing more.

As for the block out other cardinal directions?  I suppose you could, but that would likely reduce your punkin yield quite dramatically.  

@Broccoli Clock Pumpkins grow differently than other crops.  To get maximum yield, they will grow a vine in the cardinal directions from the seed you plant.  Those vines can grow up to 4 blocks.  Maximum yield requires each plant have a 9x9 square to grow in.

[Broccoli Clock]

4 minutes ago, dakko said:

I think removing the withered vine would theoretically provide it with an option to sprout a new vine. Assuming of course that you haven't entered winter, but it sounds like you did!

Thankfully I managed to save one pumpkin seed.. *phew*. This world seems quite Northerly, previous winters were cold but not "killing plants in the greenhouse" cold (and yes, things like carrots and turnips are dying). I am in two minds, shut up shop and make a huge travel South (hoping South will take me more to the equator, I'm not sure I can guarantee that), or just stick it out where I am.

Has anyone done a playthrough where they had a Winter vacation home in a more temperate climate or when people move is it lock, stock and barrel?

[Maelstrom]

Lots of people have a southern home.  In fact, quite a few Utoobers do that in their let's play.  Some will just begin a massive run south when the spawn.

[Broccoli Clock]

7 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Lots of people have a southern home.  In fact, quite a few Utoobers do that in their let's play.  Some will just begin a massive run south when the spawn.

Oooh, interesting.

That bit of info may have extended the lifetime of this world I am in.

[Maelstrom]

The world is semi earthlike.  On default setting you spawn in a northern temperate zone.  Running about 15,000 blocks south will get you around the equator.  Another 25,000 will get you to the south pole.  Continue running south and you'll find another equator and pole on your journey to the world border. 

A couple, three, years ago a streamer set out on a journey to the southern world border.  He calculated it would take about 24 irl hours to get there.  It took him over 50 given the obstacles the polar regions presented at the time (which have since been changed).  At that time poles had MASSIVE mountains that pretty much streched across the entire world, reached world height and offered no passes.  Literally over 100 block sheer cliff faces.  He was planning on jumping off the edge to respawn at home, so dying traversing such regions was out of the question.

[DarkScorpyon]

On 3/28/2025 at 10:25 AM, Maelstrom said:

The world is semi earthlike.  On default setting you spawn in a northern temperate zone.  Running about 15,000 blocks south will get you around the equator.  Another 25,000 will get you to the south pole.  Continue running south and you'll find another equator and pole on your journey to the world border. 

A couple, three, years ago a streamer set out on a journey to the southern world border.  He calculated it would take about 24 irl hours to get there.  It took him over 50 given the obstacles the polar regions presented at the time (which have since been changed).  At that time poles had MASSIVE mountains that pretty much streched across the entire world, reached world height and offered no passes.  Literally over 100 block sheer cliff faces.  He was planning on jumping off the edge to respawn at home, so dying traversing such regions was out of the question.

My "run south" took 35.000 blocks away from my spawn, to find ebony wood and pineapple, took me an entire irl day lol

[Maelstrom]

Yeeeaaaahhhhh...   I was probably thinking of my world where I halve the polar distances.

[Professor Dragon]

Back to the original pumpkin question.

I've left a withered pumpkin vine in place for 5+ game years now, just for decoration.
It doesn't grow pumpkins, but it doesn't get any more "dead" either, even through winter snows.

So I remove withered vines in general, just so that I can re-use the water hole . . . but my pumpkins are scattered about in a huge regular grass field, so space isn't an issue, unlike your garden bed shown. I don't really need them for food, so they are mainly for decoration and the occasional Agriculture Trader run - although I typically plant a small field outside their caravan anyway.  Or I'll take a handful of seeds so as to plant a vine outside a way-house stop, as a "just in case."