If I had to distill the reasons why I garden down to the very most potent, pumpkins, glorious pumpkins, would be one of the few! I treasure their big, impressive leaves that always keep me informed as to what’s going on with the plant, whether droopy, lush, yellowing, or hiding squash bug eggs on their undersides. Witnessing the robust vines make unbelievably fast progress across the garden, the bees rolling around inside the blossoms, and the exciting early sighting of tiny pumpkins forming deep inside the foliage keep me enthralled. Alas, this bleak gardening season saw my young pumpkin plants get obliterated by grasshoppers early on and I have had to make peace with purchasing my favorite fall decorations from the local stands and stores rather than plucking them from the garden.
For thousands of years, pumpkins have been cultivated in Mexico after originating in Central America. Their presence is found in archaeological evidence from 7500-9000 years ago and their popularity took them in all directions afterward as one of the first cultivated food crops in the Western Hemisphere.
Nowadays, the U.S. alone produces 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins each year with most coming ripe in October! If we choose to plant our own, we get to enjoy a selection of over 45 different varieties to try out. We can pick from small, short, gigantic, yellow, white, squat, tall, and even more options to find our perfect fit.
We decorate with them, eat them, and, of course, carve them up. Replacing the tough and recalcitrant turnips that many Irish and Scottish immigrants were used to using across the Atlantic, pumpkins became the chosen carving medium for creating spooky jack o’lanterns. Made up of 92% water they made for much easier carving and rather satisfying smashing. The name is even American after first originating from ‘peopon’ in Greek meaning ‘large melon’ and shifting through ‘pompon’ and ‘pumpion’ in western Europe before becoming permanently changed here in the United States to ‘pumpkin’.
Indigenous nations grew pumpkins as part of the three-sister triad and appreciated them as an important food staple. With all parts of the pumpkin being edible, they could be used for medicinal purposes as well as delicious dishes. The blossoms, seeds, and flesh were all commonly enjoyed. Providing an excellent source of vitamin A, beta-carotene, and potassium, pumpkins had a lot to offer through history and into today. New Englanders were especially fond of the squash as you can see from this rhyme:
“For pottage and puddings and custards and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon,
If it were not for pumpkin we should be undone.”
Bob Gough, a professor of horticulture at Montana State University shares that, “Colonials made a sauce from pumpkins. They stewed them with cider to make a butter. They dried pumpkins for winter, made them into pies and mixed them with corn meal (half and half) to make bread. During the Revolutionary War even sugar and a sweet syrup were made from pumpkins.”
Today, with so many varieties available we can choose to buy pie pumpkins for cooking which have been bred to have more meaty flesh and smaller seed cavities. There are also pumpkins whose seeds are hull-less making them especially nice for anyone who enjoys roasting and eating the seeds at this time of year.
When you are shopping for your pumpkins you’ll want to choose ones that have a hard rind where your fingernail will dent it but not puncture it. Ensure also that is has a hardened stem that is around 4 inches long if possible. The extra length helps with the curing or hardening process but please don’t carry your precious pumpkin around by the stem! You want to avoid ripping the stem off which could also take part of the flesh creating a place for rot to begin and significantly shortening your pumpkin’s lifespan not to mention good looks.
If you want to try growing pumpkins yourself next year, choose fresh seeds planting them two to a hole and pick a spot that gets full sunshine and provides plenty of room for your vines to spread out. Give your plants a nitrogen fertilizer upon planting and once again when the vines begin to spread out. Make sure they are watered well but not too much since they don’t like to stay wet, preferring a good deep drink but less often. You can put them in rows four to six feet apart with plants seeded two feet apart. When the plants have three or four leaves, thin to one plant every two feet. Be sure to keep weeds under control and constantly monitor for insect pressure, especially squash bugs and their eggs. You can harvest them when their rinds are toughened up and the stems are dry.
Whatever you do with your pumpkins this year, I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Remember that you can even make them into table centerpieces, feed them to your goats and other livestock, and save the white varieties for Christmas/winter décor (yes, of course, I’ve done this). Cheers to the Great Pumpkin!
