Anyone here successfully grown a pumpkin patch?

I've never had any sort of squash or watermelon that didn't take over and leave a weedy mess. I just took out some red kuri squash vines that we grew in our raised garden. Tried to keep it climbing but that stuff escaped the bed and grew 15' in every direction. A few seeds yielded about 10 nice squashes though.

As far as fall timing, I'm very curious, and this post was not helpful. I suspect there is some reason you do not see it done in South Louisiana. All of the fall pumpkin patches are these lame pallets of squash laid out in a yard.

My watermelons this year I laid down really thick weed barrier from tractor supply. It’s basically a roll of black tarp. There’s not a single weed and its covered in watermelon vines/melons. So yes, planting things that vine over weed barrier works well. If your variety of pumpkin can set roots along runners you may way to cut a hole as they run and let them root again, but the melons haven’t cared. You also will want to poke a couple holes to let some water in unless the fabric is letting a lot through, but I’ve found it’s either/or with weed barrier. The thin stuff lets light/weeds through, the thick stuff doesn’t let much water in.

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A couple of layers of cardboard boxes is about perfect strata for a trailing vine

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This. Pumpkins, unlike watermelon benefit from burying a few nodes here and there so they will lay down more roots. You need to figure that in if you want them big.

I used to grow a couple or 3 vines a year but never really more. It was just me and the rest of my friends/family don’t care enough about pumpkins to put in the effort to process the fruit when the rare times they get interested they can just pop open a can.

I found the way I treated the plant got bigger fruit growing on a trellis rather than the ground.

I would plant the month of the 3rd week of June to the 3rd week of July to get fruit ready for Halloween to Thanksgiving.

There’s nothing like a fresh from the vine pumpkin turned into a pie or casserole.

I had an area at my farm that I planted last year.

Was able to grow the small pumpkins and some gourds but it was so hot, none of the bigger pumpkins made it.

I planted them right at July 4th as well. If I remember right they needed 100-120 days to put out fruit.