By Niamh Bailes

news@cullmantimes.com

Whether for roasted seeds, sweet pies or Halloween lanterns, the fall season is not so colorful without the versatile pumpkin. There are as many varieties of pumpkin as uses for the fruit, but they all require similar conditions to grow.

“A lot of people have the idea that pumpkins are drought resistant,” said Arnold Caylor, director of the Experiment Station in Cullman, “but that’s not the case. As people have found this year, pumpkins need a lot of water.”

Glover’s Produce has had to order pumpkins from other growers this year because the dry weather meant their patch did not produce many.

“Usually it is not hard to grow pumpkins,” said Wes Glover, “You just have to watch for diseases and spray with pesticide, but this year we didn’t have a lot of them. They need more rain than we got this summer.”

Pumpkins tend to be smaller and fewer unless the grower has some sort of irrigation system, like at Burks farm in Simcoe. William Burks grows pumpkins on five acres using an irrigation system fed by his 165 ft. deep well. A plastic coulter is placed over the drip lines and the beds to hold the moisture in.

“The irrigation system makes a big difference with growing pumpkins,” said Burks. “Ours weren’t affected by the drought really at all. We have plenty of pumpkins this year of every size and color.”

With the success of his pumpkins this year, Burks has opened a u-pick patch, open to the public Thursdays and Fridays from 3 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

He encourages people to call ahead at 385-2812 to make an appointment.

Bethsadia farmer Buddy Cardin also has a pumpkin patch this year which he maintains mainly for the enjoyment of school kids and church groups who make field trips there.

Cardin said he knew not many people would be growing this year because of the drought, but he decided to take his chances.

“I didn’t give the pumpkins any extra water,” he said. “They only got what water the good lord sent me. A couple of times, I thought the vines were going to die, and a few of them did die, but that has to be expected. I still got a good crop of big carving pumpkins.”

Cardin knows what he is talking about. He won the prize for the biggest pumpkin at last year’s county fair, with a Jack o’ Lantern weighing 118lbs.

In the South with temperatures staying high through the night in summer the plants endure extra stress, according to Caylor. Farther north, the longer days and cooler nights make much larger pumpkins.

“The Atlantic Giants are normally grown in the North East,” he said, “They have 16 to 18 hours of sunlight up there in the summer, whereas in the south we only have 12 to 13 hours. That makes all the difference in the size of the fruit.”

On record, the biggest pumpkin ever grown weighed 1689 pounds, but giants can be grown in Cullman County too. The biggest pumpkin at the Cullman County Fair this year weighed a hefty 315 lbs, which, said Caylor, is very large for Alabama.

Caylor said pumpkins are relatively easy to grow but have four main sources of problems. Viruses show up on pumpkins as green spots or warts on the fruit.

“There is nothing you can do about the viruses,” he said. “But they generally won’t ruin the crop altogether.”

Powdery mildew is a fungal disease, which appears as powder on the vine. It is generally a dry weather problem. Burks farm had a problem with it in the summer.

“The heat stressed the pumpkins some,” said Burks, “We had a problem with powdery mildew, but it was kept under control and didn’t affect the crop.”

But wet weather has its drawbacks too. Downy mildew is a major problem in wet conditions said Caylor, and there are no cultivars resistant to it. Pickleworms are “just about guaranteed” to be a problem every yea,r he said. Caylor combats this problem by spraying pesticide on the pumpkin flowers as soon as the fruit appears. He said the spray must be applied at sunset after the flowers have closed up so as not to affect the bees pollinating the flowers.

“That’s the main reason pumpkins are not easy to grow,” said Cardin. “As soon as you see the first bloom you have to spray every 5 to 7 days to keep the worms off, more if it rains. If they get inside the pumpkin they can ruin the harvest.”

Lately some farmers have adopted the practice of no-till planting. At the experiment station agents use a machine to cut through the previous year’s plant residue and sow the seeds so as not to disturb the soil structure. This helps the pumpkins, said Caylor because “it allows the new fruit to rest on top of the plant matter instead of on the bare ground so it prevents rot. If they sit on bare soil they get what we call water warts,” he said. “It makes for real ugly ornamentals.”

All types of pumpkin are edible, but some tend to be more appetizing. According to Caylor, canned pumpkin-pie filling is typically made with Hubbard winter squash, which resembles a pumpkin closely but has a much sweeter taste.

“We have grown over 40 different cultivars here at the experiment station, but there are probably around 100,” said Caylor. “Some of these are winter squash, or hybrids which are very similar and are commonly known as pumpkins.”

Giant pumpkins have a stringy texture and miniatures do not have enough meat for making soups or pies. The smaller varieties generally arrive at the table in the form of hollowed-out soup bowls.