Pumpkins: Plan Now For Gorgeous Orbs

I think that some of the most rewarding projects in the garden are the ones that take time—projects that don’t give you instant gratification, but in the end can give you intense satisfaction. The one I have in mind would get started pretty soon and take you seven to eight months to complete. You can do it alone or with a partner or with your kids. You can put a lot of work and time into it or very little. The payoff can be huge or tiny and if it’s your first time you’ll probably be very, very successful.

In this project you’ll be growing a berry. Well, in truth it’s a fruit, but technically it’s a berry. The project has the potential to take up a lot of space, but at the same time it can be inconspicuous.

To get started do a little planning and watch a movie. That’s right, a movie. But first a question. Why are you growing a pumpkin or pumpkins? Is it for a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween, for making pies, for seeds, for decoration? It can be one or all of these but in order to buy the right seeds you need to consider what you will do with your pumpkin. Varieties are bred for each use and some can double as pie makers and scary candle-lit ornaments. Some are better for seed production and some for their colors (hues of orange, red and even white), smoothness or knobbiness and for size, from half a ton to just a couple of ounces.

And in the process of this decision-making comes the movie. In 2012 a most amazing documentary was presented on PBS titled “Lords of the Gourd: The Pursuit of Excellence.” It’s all about the competition for largest pumpkin and the annual weigh-off in Cooperstown, New York. It’s filled with lots of horticulture and fun pumpkin facts, but, like any good film, it’s also got suspense, drama, failure and success. Even if you don’t want to grow one of these half-ton berries (yes indeed, they are berries), you and your kids will enjoy it, and then you can decide if you’ve got what it takes to grow a winner. You can find the film on PBS video archives at http://video.pbs.org/video/2140299292 and on Youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=voJ26zgR3jM

Now, before we get into the actual growing of pumpkins, consider how many uses there are for this berry. Its use at Halloween and as a fall ornament is obvious, as is its use for the obligatory pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. I frequent a pasta shop that sells a wonderful fresh pumpkin ravioli in the fall and when that’s not available I confess to stocking up on a Healthy Choice frozen dinner that has not only pumpkin ravioli in it but butternut squash as well. The young pumpkin flowers are also quite tasty but eaten at the cost of … no pumpkins.

Small pumpkins can be cooked with cornbread stuffing and sautéed greens. A pumpkin butter can be made that’s said to do wonders for your skin. You can make a pumpkin soup with leeks, apples and ginger. And let’s not forget pumpkin muffins and pumpkin biscuits. It’s been said that a famous house-and-home maven uses small pumpkins as air fresheners. The innards of a pumpkin can be carved out and used for a soup stock or fed to birds, while the seeds can be dried or roasted and saved for snacking through the winter or as a bird and squirrel food. Then there’s the pumpkin chocolate cake—and I’m sure there are plenty of other opportunities including, last but by no means least ... the compost pile.

Hollowed-out pumpkins called jack-o’-lanterns can be traced back to the people in Ireland and England who carved out beets, potatoes and turnips to use as lanterns on this festive occasion. They were named for a miser named Jack who could not enter heaven and played jokes on the devil. Now no Halloween is complete without the eerie glow of a pumpkin face in the window. This single day has made pumpkin production a booming business. It’s doubtful whether large-scale pumpkin production would exist without Halloween—pumpkin pie is not enough of a hit to support the industry!

Fairy tales and legends from America and other countries contain many references to the pumpkin. There is the episode in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in which the ghostly character lifts his pumpkin head from the pommel of his saddle and hurls it at the fleeing Ichabod Crane.

In a legend of India, a devoted father used a large pumpkin as a tomb for his only son. In time, the pumpkin was found to be filled with water in which swam large fish. Intent on harvesting the fish, four brothers lifted the pumpkin to carry it away but became frightened and dropped it. From the resulting cracks in the pumpkin shell, a flood of water poured out to inundate the earth.

The pumpkin achieved a romantic high when one of its oversized brothers served as a golden coach for Cinderella. It also must have been a sizable pumpkin shell in which Peter the Pumpkin Eater confined his wandering wife. Regardless of whether one of the legends, or Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch waiting for the “Great Pumpkin” to appear, has stimulated the use of pumpkins at Halloween, this overgrown squash that we call a pumpkin is in real demand come October and you should be growing your own, even if it’s a small one. The question always arises, however: why don’t gardeners grow their own?

Certain problems arise in trying to produce pumpkins for Halloween. Pumpkin production is easier said than done, which is exactly why even the most professional green thumbers purchase farm-grown pumpkins. What is the problem? The first reason that pumpkins are in fact difficult to grow is that they are long-season crops. Pumpkins require a minimum of three to four months to mature a fruit—and the bigger the pumpkin desired, the longer the maturity season needed. Pumpkins are also frost-susceptible, and are easily damaged by cold temperatures.

This all means planting must occur after the last killing frost and that maturity will be sometime in mid- to late summer. Then you will have to store the pumpkins any time from August on. On the other hand, you can start them later, so they ripen later and the storage problem is solved … though the pumpkins will be smaller.

One interesting fact, though, is that first-time pumpkin growers usually have an easy time of it. It’s only when you grow them year after year that you run into problems. This is because the diseases and insects that can affect pumpkins build up over years, so the first year is always the best.

Well then, why not wait to plant until July so that maturity and harvest can occur in October? Think again! Even though pumpkin seeds germinate best in very warm soil temperatures, there is another pumpkin disaster just waiting to happen when the plants pop-up: vine borers. In the fall, these killers are so efficient that many plants are destroyed before leaves are formed. The cost of insecticides required to protect the plants for three months during such an onslaught far exceeds what a pumpkin will cost. In addition, these pumpkin plants are readily infected with virus and fungus diseases that are abundant during our humid East End summers and render pumpkin production almost impossible in humid wet summers.

Suppose that you want the challenge of fall pumpkin production. If the vine borers and the mosaic virus don’t get you, the space requirement might. Depending on the variety you choose, pumpkin vines can be gigantic! Even with five feet between plants on beds that are at least 12 feet apart, these super growers may become crowded. These spacing dimensions mean that a “hill” of pumpkins may require at least 60 square feet. Some entire gardens aren’t that big!

But fear not, there are bush and miniature types that require substantially less space, but produce notably smaller Jacks.

Next week … on the road to the perfect pumpkin. In the meantime, shop for seeds and keep growing.