A half whiskey barrel size pot is good for one plant and maybe a small annual or two to fill in the bottom when the plant is vining. More than two plants per pot is definitely too many, one is ideal. Pumpkins definitely prefer direct sowing, but in your zone you might not have a long enough season to do that. I would recommend that you try miracle gro moisture control soil in the pots because if the plants wilt often you might not get fruit set. Also I know watering is probably the last thing you have time for at a school. Here is an example of a good size pot, the plant is a young mini bottle gourd, which ultimately had 11 small gourds: For scale towards the bottom of the picture in the pot are two nasturtium leaves of a seedling. Also here are some small pumpkins grown in the same pot (but with no picture of the pot) I had over 6 small pumpkins from this one plant:

Would like to trade for your Dwarf Siberian Kale (perhaps a double trade?). I have the following heirloom tomatoes: Yellow Pear - 2012 - Commercial Abe Lincoln - 2012 - Commercial Black Sea Man - 2012 - From a trade PLMK! :)

That's great!

We planted some pumpkins and a bunch of other stuff about a month ago. I wasn't gonna do a veggie garden this year since we recently moved here and it was getting late in the season for some stuff, but the kids wanted one so we decided to risk it. We put down some black cow and mixed it in with the soil before we planted. I am positive we didn't give the big pumpkins enough room though lol~ so I am sure this will be a comedy of errors! Small baby boo pumpkins and such can be trained up an A-frame or other trellis but the big ones get too heavy to tie up. I got some worm poo stakes to make a tea with for the pumpkins this year (kinda an experiment). Please keep us posted with yours, I would like to hear how it progresses. ~SJN