Orange crush
Pumpkins are king of the fall harvest and can be counted on to provide smiles during this time of year.
There is a lot to love about pumpkins.
First, they are fun. It doesn’t feel like October without a pumpkin on the stoop. Carved into a jack-o’-lantern, or chosen for its irregular and warty appearance, pumpkins give us our own jack-o’-lantern smile.
It was the Irish who brought the tradition to North America. A couple hundred years ago in Ireland, they carved turnips into lanterns to ward off “Stingy Jack.” Upon landing in North America, they found pumpkins were easier to carve.
As décor, a pumpkin doesn’t create waste. Simply toss it in the composter or just leave it on the surface of the soil in your garden and let the frost “melt” it into the soil. You can even eat some of it before if goes in the compost. As a couple of practical guys, we appreciate any décor that lends itself to eating and composting.
They are delicious, and nutritious. Pumpkin pie happens to be Ben’s favourite, and generously salted pumpkin seeds are a favourite of Mark’s. You might have to look elsewhere for the “nutritious” recipes, but here’s a cooking tip from Ben’s kitchen: substitute shelled pumpkin seeds for pine nuts in pesto recipes to save money and accommodate pine-nut allergies. Nobody will tell the difference.
According to Statistics Canada, there were over 2,500 farms in Canada with pumpkin patches last year and, as of 2001, pumpkins had risen to become our seventh most important vegetable crop after potatoes, sweet corn, peas, beans, tomatoes and carrots, up from 15th in 1986. Pumpkins, a cultivar of squash (Cucurbita pepo), are native to Mexico and the southern U.S. but are indeed a very Canadian crop.
Visit any fall fair and you are sure to find the crowds gathered around the giant pumpkin display. Phil Hunt from Cameron, Ont., broke the Canadian record last year for a giant pumpkin weighing in at 1,959 pounds — close to being Canada’s first one-ton pumpkin. If you’re thinking of getting in on this game, “Dill’s Atlantic Giant” of Windsor, N.S., is said to be the World Largest Pumpkin Variety — the product of 30 years of selective breeding by Howard Dill. Order your seeds direct (https://www.howarddill.com/) and plug into a world of resources through the Giant Vegetable Growers of Ontario (https:// www.gvgo.ca/).
Whether you want to go down in history as Canada’s first one-tonne pumpkin grower or you’re pulling a pie out of the oven, you can count on pumpkins to provide smiles at this time of year.
Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster, tree advocate and Member of the Order of Canada. His son Ben is a fourth-generation urban gardener and graduate of University of Guelph and Dalhousie University in Halifax. Follow them at markcullen.com, @markcullengardening and on Facebook.