Pumpkin: The Fruit that Nourished A Nation

By Barbara Melera

For millennia, members of the pumpkin family have nourished, protected, and been key to the survival of indigenous Americans, colonial Americans, and immigrant Americans. The development of the pumpkin as a major food source was probably thanks to the indigenous peoples of North and South America. All squash, gourds, and pumpkins originally possessed tasteless or bitter flesh, which was essentially inedible. As the native peoples cultivated these fruit for utensils, they began to note that some of the flesh of these fruits became tastier and, with cultivation over decades, the flesh of some pumpkins became very sweet.

Pumpkin, because it stores so well, was often the major vegetative food source. It is probably safe to say that no single vegetative food source was more critical to the growth of the American peoples than squash and pumpkins.

American gardeners, in general, plant pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers way too early and most of these gardeners start with seedlings rather than seeds. Pumpkins, squash, melons, and cucumbers should always be direct-seeded in early summer into soil whose temperatures have risen to at least 70 degrees.

Throughout the United States, there are three problems that, generally, plague pumpkin, squash, melon, and cucumber plants: production of male flowers, squash borer, and wilt. For all of these, the easiest way to mitigate the problem is by planting much later than you normally would plant and from seed not seedlings.

Pumpkins are monoecious plants, meaning each plant produces male and female blossoms. Usually the male blossoms, which have much-needed pollen, are produced first and the female blossoms come later. The female blossoms must have male blossoms in full bloom to produce fruit. Male blossoms are very sensitive to temperature. Pumpkin plants will either not produce or produce very few male blossoms if the temperatures are below 65 degrees. The blossoms are particularly sensitive to nighttime temperatures. When it is cold, the plants produce female blossoms first, but without the pollen from the male flowers, no fruit is produced.

The remedy is to plant much later (at least 14–21 days) and plant from seed.

Disease and Other Issues

There are two kinds of wilt that primarily damage or destroy squash, pumpkin, cucumber, or melon plants: squash wilt and powdery mildew.

Squash wilt is a bacterium that is carried by the ubiquitous cucumber beetle, an insect that attacks all vining plants. The bacterium is carried in the digestive system of the beetle and transmitted to the pumpkin plant when the beetle deposits its excrement on the plant’s leaves. The cucumber beetle becomes active throughout the U.S. in mid- to late May and early June, and dies out in several weeks.

The remedy is to plant squash, pumpkins, cucumber, and melon from seeds, much later, after the cucumber beetle has died out.

Powdery mildew is a fungus that grows best in warm, moist conditions. The spores germinate in cool, moist soil and proliferate with heat and humidity.

The remedy is to plant squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and melon from seed in mid- to late June when the soil has dried out, which discourages spore germination. In the dry heat of late summer, the fungus is less likely to proliferate. Make sure there is good air circulation between the vines.

Pumpkin gardeners east of the Rocky Mountains are plagued by squash borers. To minimize the damage from squash borers, plant your pumpkins at the end of June.

Squash borers are native to the U.S., east of the Rocky Mountains. The borer is the larval stage of the Clearwing Moth, a wasp-like insect with coppergreen forewings and an orange and black abdomen. The borer winters over in a cocoon located 1 to 2 inches below the surface of the soil.

The Clearwing Moth hatches out of its cocoon when the squash vine begins to vine and lays single, oval, brown eggs on the stems and leaf stalks of the vine. The borers hatch in about a week and tunnel into the vine to eat. After feeding for 4 to 6 weeks, the borer returns to the soil, where it builds a cocoon and rests for the winter.

The remedy is planting your squash in late June or early July, after the borers have finished eating and are buried in the soil. This will eliminate or reduce the problem.

One curious fact about the squash borer is that the Clearwing Moth does not like radish, so planting radishes among your squash will deter the Clearwing Moth.

The bottom line on the problems with squash and pumpkins is plant from seed and, for most of the U.S. plant 14–21 days later than you have been planting.

Pumpkin Growing Tips

Pumpkins and squash should be planted in approximately 4-foot diameter hills that are roughly 1 foot high. Plant four vines per hill to sow 8–12 seeds per hill and thin to the four strongest seedlings. Plant the seeds 1–2 inches deep and water gently. Once germination has taken place, fertilize aggressively with a low-nitrogen, high-potassium, and phosphorus fertilizer weekly. Water generously for the first few weeks until fruit production has concluded.

Pumpkin Picks

• Dill’s Atlantic Giant Pumpkin Cucurbita maxima, the giant pumpkins (pictured on page 16), are the largest fruits on Earth. In the U.S., the first description of mammoth pumpkins appeared in the late 1820s. Today’s giant pumpkins are descendants of a much beloved French pumpkin, ‘Jaune Gros de Paris’. Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist, may have introduced the first seed into the U.S. Thoreau received seeds from the U.S. Patent Office in 1857 and from these seeds, he grew five pumpkins weighing a total of 310 pounds. The largest of these five pumpkins weighed 123 ½ pounds. Skip forward 100+ years to 1978. In that year, Howard Dill of Windsor, Nova Scotia, known lovingly as the “Pumpkin King,” introduced the ‘Atlantic Giant’. After a decades-long amateur breeding effort, Dill produced the quintessential giant pumpkin. An average ‘Atlantic Giant’ weighs 90 pounds and is roughly 1½ feet long by 2 feet wide. The largest ‘Atlantic Giant’ on record was 1,385 pounds.

The story of the ‘Boston Marrow’ (top, right) belongs to one of America’s greatest seedsmen, James J. H. Gregory. The ‘Boston Marrow’ is a member of the Hubbard family of squash, which botanically are Cucurbita maxima. Hubbards are native to South America, having developed from an ancient predecessor, Cucurbita andreana. They were domesticated by indigenous peoples over many centuries, which may have been a contributing factor to their incredible sweetness. They were introduced to the American public by Gregory.

How these pumpkins/squash arrived in the U.S. from South America is not clear. The Iroquois may have shared seeds with a Marblehead gardener, who then shared seeds with Gregory, or Captain Knott Martin may have brought seeds from South America to his home in Marblehead, MA. Martin then shared his seeds with a Marblehead gardener, who, in turn, shared seeds with Gregory. Somewhere in this confusion, lies the truth, but what we do know is that around 1798, the pumpkin reached New England. The Iroquois grew the pumpkins before the fruit were introduced to the American public in the 1840s by Gregory.

For more than 175 years, this pumpkin was the favorite pie making choice for Americans. The 10—20-pound fruits are oblong with a green nubbin at the blossom end. The skin is a bright reddish-orange, and the flesh is yellow, orange, thick, fine-grained, tender, and quite sweet.

ornamental, but its flesh is also quite sweet, so this pumpkin is both edible and ornamental.

‘Casper’ was developed by Jerry Howell of Fonthill, Ontario, from the ‘Shamrock’ pumpkin. He introduced it in 1992. Another parent might have been ‘Lumina’.

The 10–20-pound pumpkins are borne on somewhat shorter, 4–5 foot vines, which makes them well-suited for containers.

All squash grow well in containers, but you should allow fruit development to take place outside the containers on the ground, decking, or concrete. You must fertilize weekly and water generously.

The ‘Casper’ pumpkin (above) is worth mentioning for several reasons. First, it is the whitest of the many white pumpkin cultivars, most of which have a bluish tinge to their white skins. Second, as a container plant, it is very

• The Small Sugar or Pie Pumpkin

The ‘Small Sugar’ or ‘Pie Pumpkin’ (above) has been cultivated by Americans for more than 150 years. Native Americans shared seeds of this pumpkin with the earliest colonists.

Along with the ‘Boston Marrow’, it is the quintessential pie pumpkin, but unlike the ‘Boston Marrow’, it can also make a great Jack O’ Lantern.

‘Small Sugar’ pumpkins are small, 5–8 pounds, round, but slightly flattened at both ends, orange, and lightly ribbed.The flesh is thick, stringless, fine-grained, and very sweet.

When planted from seed near the end of June, the vines will produce mature pumpkins by the middle of September, just in time for the witching hour.

These pumpkins are four of the best for many different reasons. For those of you intent on cheating Mother Nature by planting these early in May next year or from seedlings, don’t try it. Gardening, like cooking, is an exercise in patience and restraint.

Wait until the time is right!

Barbara Melera is president of Harvesting History (www.harvesting-history.com), a company that sells horticultural and agricultural products, largely of the heirloom variety, along with garden tools and equipment.