As the days grow cooler and sunlight becomes shorter, we are getting into pumpkin-picking season, and farms that grow pumpkins said they have been facing an unpredictable challenge — Mother Nature.
With Halloween just a little more than three weeks away, grocery stores and nurseries have pumpkins ready to be sold and eventually carved.
The weather has been marked by back-and-forth conditions, with periods of drought followed by heavy rain. At times, it has raised concerns about the availability of pumpkins for the busy fall season.
“We had a really dry midsummer through July with very little rain,” said Alan Sharp, the owner of Sharp’s at Waterford Farm in Brookeville, Maryland.
Drought conditions can mean trouble for pumpkins, as they require consistent moisture to develop properly. When a pumpkin plant doesn’t get enough water, it struggles to maintain the energy it needs for vine development and fruit production. That can lead to fewer and smaller pumpkins.
According to Sharp, heavy rain that fell in August helped save the day.
“We were just getting ready to gear up to start irrigating our pumpkins by pumping water from our ponds onto the pumpkin crop,” Sharp said. “We ended up not having to do that because we got all that rain.”
“It was really in need of water, and we got it all at once,” he added.
But too much rain can also be a problem. The recent, long stretch of rainy days from the remnants of Hurricane Helene would have caused trouble for the pumpkins if it had happened earlier in the season.
“If we get too much rain at an inopportune time, the fruit can actually take on all that water and start to rot,” Sharp said.
Luckily, the crop was already done growing when that weather came through.
“The crop had made it, so it wasn’t in that critical window when you can get too much rain to really make the pumpkins rot,” Sharp emphasized.
As for the size and number of pumpkins available, Sharp described it as “a pretty good pumpkin crop,” although, he said, because of all the weather changes, it’s “nothing to write home about.”
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