Pumpkins get weirder and uglier each year

Growers tinker with colours, shapes and sizes (even warts) to meet quirky demands

Since 1999, the Ackerman family of Illinois has been selling the round orange pumpkins that most North Americans carve into decorative jack-o’-lanterns every Halloween. But in recent years, the gourds have been getting a lot weirder.

That’s by design. Although plenty of customers still buy the traditional pumpkins, demand has surged for ones with different colours, shapes and deformities — like all pink or white with red veins or covered in bulbous warts. The Ackermans now sell 160 different varieties, according to John Ackerman, who planted a few blue pumpkins on a whim 16 years ago, hoping to expand the income from the livestock, corn and soybean operations that have been in his family since 1909.

“People would walk up and see that pumpkin and they’d say, ‘This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,’ ” Ackerman, 54, said from his 120-hectare farm in Morton, Ill., which includes 30 hectares of pumpkins. “And the next words they said were, ‘Please give me three of those!’ ”

Weird-looking or unusually big pumpkins fetch a hefty premium for growers. Seed companies such as W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and Rispens Seeds have responded by developing hundreds of new varieties in recent years. The quirkier ones are winning a bigger share of the increasing market for decorative pumpkins, said Mohammad Babadoost, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Illinois in Urbana.

Pumpkins “that are unique and different are what the consumers buy first,” because most want their seasonal decorations to stand out, said Phil King, marketing communications manager at Rupp Seeds in Wauseon, Ohio.

The company sells 78 different pumpkin-seed varieties, almost twice what it did two decades ago.

Carved jack-o’-lanterns remain the most popular use of pumpkins, but they also end up in food such as pies, breads, soups and even seasonal beers.

“The entertainment-pumpkin deal started 25 or 30 years ago and it just keeps growing,” said Ross Rispens, the third-generation owner of Rispens Seeds in Beecher, Ill. “People realized they will pay.”

The company, which has been selling seeds for 87 years, tries out new varieties every year. It now markets more than 75 different kinds of pumpkins, compared with six in 1978, he said.

When Burpee began as a seed company in 1881, the only pumpkin varieties it sold were for making pies. That began to change in the past decade, as it began breeding more ornamental types, said Chelsey Fields, vegetable product manager at Burpee in Warminster, Pa.

“The genetics of pumpkins include a lot of interesting shapes and colours,” said Peter Zuck, the vegetable-product manager at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Winslow, Maine, which sells 51 varieties, up from 10 two decades ago.

“Looking at the parents, you can’t predict what the offspring is going to look like. Sometimes it happens by accident. Breeding pumpkins is a kind of beauty contest.”