Farmer Will shares his passion for pumpkins!
Fall is upon us, and with the season’s arrival a bountiful harvest is soon approaching. One particular plant has been the subject of the most anticipation: PUMPKINS!
We sat down with Farmer Will to talk about the pumpkin patch, his passion project this season.
“I love fall. I love pumpkins. I love Halloween. It’s so much fun growing them because you put them in on July 4th and then in a month and a half, they’re huge.”
Work on the patch has been underway all season long, starting with planning in January, cover cropping in March, adding deer fencing in early July, and planting in mid-July. Already the farm has produced close to 1,000 pounds of multiple varieties of pumpkins (mini, pie, jack o’lantern, Cinderella, and giant pumpkins), delicata and butternut squash, as well as specialty decorative gourds, with more on the way. We like the funkier–and in our opinion, cutest types–gremlins! (Assistant Grower Sammy poses with one here!)
To get this high quality and volume of organic fall produce, preparation was essential, especially cover cropping. “I wanted to get a really thick layer of organic matter down on the beds and build up the soil a little better before we started putting veggies in there.” Using a mix of field peas, fava beans, mustard greens, red clover, and triticale (a short-growing wheat grass), Will aimed to improve the fertility and composition of the patch’s soil. This particular mix helped him nourish the soil by sequestering nitrogen, where the cover crop acts like a sponge, absorbing nitrogen from the atmosphere and passing it onto the soil it grows in. Using a flail mower, Will shredded the cover crop to make more organic material available for the pumpkins to use as they grew.
The patch also became a helpful educational tool in soil renewal for EarthDance apprentices. “Not only did I want to cover crop it to improve the soil, but also to show what cover cropping does and why it’s important to experiment a little bit.”
The project wasn’t without its challenges, including pests like cucumber and squash beetles, which target squash, gourds, and other members of the Cucurbitaceae family: “Cucumber beetles carry a bacteria in their stomach and it gives the cucumber plants bacterial wilt. And so they’ll bite a plant with bacterial wilt and then they’ll fly across the greenhouse and then bite another one and give that one bacterial wilt.” Bacterial wilt is just what it sounds like–wilting leaves and turning them yellow or brown, thereby stunting growth and reducing yield.
That’s where all that planning came in handy! “Cucumbers and squash were in the tunnels, and then there were some up in [another plot]. And so I put the patch far away from everything. While the patch was growing up, we still had cukes and squash in the ground. And those are much more stressed out, older plants, stinkier. So all the bugs were kind of staying on those while the new stuff was growing and getting big.”
Once growth took off, Will says, accounting for a certain degree of loss, the patch was resilient enough against pests and heat that it flourished despite the less-than-optimal conditions this season. “That’s what’s great about squash and pumpkins. They do well in crappy soil, and they don’t like a lot of water,” making them the perfect heat-tolerant crop for these last few dry months. The secret to his success? Time and attention. ” I didn’t cut corners. As soon as you start cutting corners in farming, you see the effects of it very quickly.”
What would Will like you to take away when you come to EarthDance for a gourd-geous pumpkin? Coming from an educational farm like EarthDance, he enjoys teaching about the process of planning, planting, and preparing pumpkins post-harvest. He loves the many versatile uses our produce has: “Most people carve jack-o’-lanterns, but you can still eat them. You can still make a pumpkin pie. If you don’t take the seeds out and roast them, I think you’re wasting a lot of the pumpkin that you’re paying for.”
(P.S. You can eat mini pumpkins!)
And they’re organic. “Pumpkin patches in this area get sprayed with a lot of different stuff to keep the bugs and disease off. You know, I don’t know about eating those seeds, but I know if I carve that pumpkin up there and eat those seeds, they’re the cleanest. I didn’t spray anything on them.”
Pumpkin skin, despite popular belief, is not tough enough to withstand contamination. Most produce, including pumpkins, absorbs toxins directly into their flesh. These toxins can originate from various sources such as a farm’s current or past herbicide use, manufacturing runoff, and other chemicals present in the land. This makes many grocery store pumpkins unsafe to eat if they are not certified organic.
Organic pumpkins are also safer to compost in your yard waste pile or with EarthDay 365 from November 1st, all the way up to December 6th this year! Drop-off points will be stationed at 4125 Humphrey St. (South City) and 4601 Pope Ave. (North City). To support local animals with your pumpkins, you can donate them to farms to feed livestock or, if you’ve got chickens, they will like what you don’t eat!
Another helpful reminder that organic farming contributes to a cleaner, safer food supply and helps foster a healthier ecosystem for future generations!
Pumpkins will be available at the PWYC Farm Stand and Ferguson Farmers Market throughout all of October.
Saturdays 8am-noon at 501 S. Florissant Rd. The last outdoor market of this season is on October 25th!
From now until November 23, our on-site Pay What You Can Farm Stand is only open on Sundays from 11am-3pm.
Keep an eye out for some pumpkin recipes at our Farm Stand and Market, plus on our social media!
