This past year we tried something new. Hannah decided she wanted to feature white pumpkins along with her flowers in her wedding in October. So, what does any smart-minded farmer do? Why we plant pumpkins. Now knowing me, I couldn’t just plant white pumpkins for the wedding – I had to plant white, and orange, and yellow, and striped, and giants and miniatures….cuz that’s the kind of thing I do. Ha ha! So we planted pumpkins, in addition to our regular crops, of course. They came up and grew beautifully. And we waited for the rain. And we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more. We waited 6 weeks for rain. Most of our pumpkins survived, but they were small. Our summer consisted of extreme heat and no water – resulting in a summer drought for our area. Of course, we didn’t plant the pumpkins in an area where irrigation was provided. Because of this, the results were obvious. We did manage to harvest about a hundred large pumpkins in assorted colors and sizes – but no white. The miniatures, which were planted closer to the areas of irrigation, did much better and we managed to harvest several hundred fruits in assorted colors – including white. In addition to the standards, we planted ten hills of large pink pumpkins. These were given to Hannah at a conference and were developed as a fundraiser for FFA organizations to promote breast cancer awareness. The seed pack only held 10 seeds so we planted 10 hills and had about a 50% germination. Normally I would have planted 2 seeds per hill but I was hoping to stretch them a bit. Of these 5 plants and the summer’s resulting harsh conditions, we were only able to harvest 4 pumpkins – but they were beauties! A gorgeous soft pink weighing in at between 25 and 35 lbs each. All in all, our pumpkin planting endeavor was very educational as all gardening should be. We learned a great deal about pumpkins and will change our planting methods this summer as we again plant pumpkins for fall harvest…..here we grow again!
