The Making of a Pumpkin
By Will Jaquinde, Operations Specialist and Head Pumpkin
The Bowers pumpkin patch in late July. See if you can spot the yellow flowers that will produce those huge orange globes.
Join us at Fall Fest this year, October 23-24, to see the patch and take home a fruit of our labor!
Long before our visitors come out in the fall to visit our pumpkin patch, the work to produce a pumpkin has begun. For producers that work is continuous, a seasonal cycle of planning, growing, observing, marketing and then doing it all over again. Often, the season has hardly begun before we are thinking forward to the next, observing our successes and failures and dreaming up innovations for the next go round.
The seed that starts a pumpkin takes quite the journey before it finds its home in the soil. Seed breeders pour their heart and soul into crafting a variety with all the traits a farmer desires: plentiful yields, disease resistance, consistency and any other attributes a farmer can use to grow more and better crops. This work, the careful selection of the best plants year after year, takes decades and that’s in addition to the thousands of years of tireless effort by native cultures that took a wild plant and turned it into a crop.
Producers themselves invest days every year into crafting a plan that balances a number of variables to determine where, when and how much of something to plant; soil type, type of irrigation, slope, drainage and what was planted in that location the last 3-5 years. When the farmer decides this crop plan is good enough, they place their seed order, putting up thousands of dollars for seeds that won’t yield profits for the better part of a year.
Most modern farmers don’t produce their own seeds. The work to produce seeds is highly detailed oriented and requires careful observation and control, something that producers don’t often have the attention to execute to perfection during the hectic growing season. Instead, they let breeders handle the exacting work of producing seed that is disease free, consistent and has high germination rates.
Seeds can be purchased with specialized coatings that besides looking pretty increase germination rates and reduce insect and disease pressure in the all-important seedling stage.
Pumpkin seedlings emerge into a world without weeds- for now. Note the coated seed husks that have just been shed and the specks of the other green seedlings just emerging.
When the time to plant draws near, the rush to prepare and plant is on. Spring usually only allows a small handful of windows to prepare the soil when it is dry enough to run equipment over it. Here at Bowers we use a tool called a disc to start that process, an implement with rows of large steel discs that break up the soil surface and cut through last season’s debris. We then follow that with a shallow pass of the tiller, which will create ideal conditions to plant seeds and cultivate later on.
Ideally the soil is prepared weeks in advance of seeding. This gives us wiggle room if the weather misbehaves but it also allows the first flush of weed seeds to germinate. Weeds are the bane of every farmer’s existence and more energy is spent on dealing with weeds than on any other farm task. Weeds take up valuable nutrients and water as well as spread diseases.
With the soil ready to plant, weeds starting to germinate and the perfect amount of rain in the forecast, not too much or too little, we rush to plant and apply a preemergent herbicide which the rain will distribute through the top couple of inches of soil. Preemergent herbicides work by inhibiting the germination of weed seeds but not of the crop. If done correctly, pumpkins will emerge into a weed free bed, with a few weeks of competition free growth before the next flush of weeds emerge. Using herbicides in this way requires much less of them and gives the farmer a huge leg up on weeds to start the season, the most critical time to keep weeds out of the field. Farmers today are more aware than ever of the potential negative effects of chemical use- after all, no one deals with them in greater quantities and higher doses than the person who applies them. We attend mandated trainings, carefully choose the right chemical tool for the job and wait for the right conditions to safely apply the least possible amount of chemical.
After the pumpkins emerge we regularly cultivate the soil, which is the act of lightly disturbing the soil surface to disturb the small, newly emerging weeds, exposing them to sun and wind and withering them. We regularly observe for signs of insects or disease that rises to the level of requiring our attention. One of our biggest issues is deer, who despite a fence purpose built to keep them out, find a way in. We patrol regularly to repair breaks in the fence, check the electric lines for shorts or clear fallen trees off the fence.
The author uses an S-tine harrow to quickly work up the top inch of soil, killing weeds and creating a mulch of soil that breaks capillary action, conserving water.
If all goes according to plan, or at least mostly so, we’ll end up with a decent enough harvest that we’ll attempt the whole process again next year. While the process is long and there are many setbacks and variables outside of the farmer’s control, growing crops is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. At least we think so!