Halloween just wouldn’t be the same without those brightly coloured jack-o’-lanterns greeting you outside every house, painstakingly carved out and lit up by candles. Although originally designed to ward off evil spirits (or, these days, to scare off trick-or-treating little horrors), they are actually a rather welcoming sight.
This year, however, millions of families might miss out on the age-old tradition due to a major national pumpkin shortage. A season plagued by bad weather has left most farmers’ crops rotten or green.
Europe’s biggest supplier, David Bowman of David Bowman Pumpkins, reports that the crop is 20 per cent down, and some smaller growers have lost everything. “The pumpkins are as green as my Land Rover. We should have finished the harvest by now but we’ll have to continue for up to 10 days,” he says. “The demand is through the roof. So many people have lost so much and it’s all down to the weather.”
Couldn’t pumpkin growers use polytunnels, like soft-fruit farmers? Apparently not. “Pumpkins are too bulky to grow in tunnels, and it would cost too much. Growing strawberries is good money, pumpkins isn’t. All you can do is hope for better weather next year,” he explains.
Lincolnshire-based farmer Bowman trialled a number of new varieties this season, to no avail.
“We’re always trying new varieties. I tried six this year, but the majority haven’t worked very well. They’re still completely green, whereas my more tried and tested varieties are turning orange now.”
The danger, of course, is that if his crop doesn’t meet his clients’ spec they won’t get sold. “There are going to be a lot of slightly greenish pumpkins on the market this year,” he predicts. “I knew back in May that it was going to be a bad season and I’ve been panicking about it all year.”
Bowman and his pumpkin-growing peers will no doubt be turning to seed breeders for potential solutions. Jamie Claxton, plant breeder at Tozer Seeds, offers some reassurance.
“We are constantly developing our pumpkin varieties as part of our breeding programme. At the moment we are attempting to make them more suitable for the climate in northern Europe,”
he says. “Generally our biggest problem is slow maturity; they are just not maturing quickly enough in the field. Rotting in the fields is also quite a big problem, so we are trying to develop varieties that are less susceptible to rotting and mildew.”
So is a solution just around the corner? Sadly, it’s not that simple. “We are years away from being able to sell these new products and supply growers on a large scale,” explains Claxton.
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