No great pumpkins this year, Charlie Brown

Between drought and too much rain, pumpkin
harvests this year are a bust.

BUFFALO, W.Va. (AP) — There’s trouble brewing in the pumpkin patch.

After enduring a summer that was at once too dry and too wet, farmers from western New York to Illinois would settle for a decent crop.

Sizzling weather and a lack of rain in July and August wiped out some pumpkin crops altogether and slashed yields for others in what the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates is a $100 million-a-year industry in which Ohio is the top producer.

Some farmers got too much rain and their crops rotted. Farmers spared those problems still have fields dotted with undersized fruit because they didn’t get enough rain.

If predictions hold true, pumpkin production should be down for the second straight year. USDA figures show a slight decrease from 2005 to 2006.

“If you’ve got to have them for your 5-year-olds, I certainly would not wait a long time to get them,” said Steve Bogash, a Penn State horticulture educator who works with about 1,600 Pennsylvania vegetable growers.

Harvest dwindled

Pennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 producer, harvested what Bogash calls a beautiful early crop. But he says the state’s midseason pumpkins were a bust and the fate of late-season pumpkins depends on decent weather holding on well into next month.

A lack of rain in July and August seems to have hurt the most.

Hot, dry weather prompts pumpkins to produce too many male blossoms and too few females. Farmers also can blame drought for scads of small pumpkins as well as lighter weights because of a lack of water.

As he stands in a 2-acre pumpkin field at his farm in Buffalo, Bob Gritt laments the condition of his crop.

“The color’s not real good on ’em,” he said. “There’s not very many big ones in there.”

At least Gritt has pumpkins. Some West Virginia farmers don’t.

The West Virginia Pumpkin Festival has found itself in what organizer Martha Poore says is the unusual position of importing pumpkins for the four-day event that lures about 40,000 visitors to Milton every year.

Organizers of Ohio’s Circleville Pumpkin Show, the nation’s largest, aren’t worried about having enough pumpkins. But Vice President Barry Keller says competitors in the show’s big pumpkin contest are concerned their entries won’t break records.

“It’s just too hot for them,” Keller said. Growers cut the giant pumpkins, which can top 1,000 pounds, just before the show. “I’d say they’re probably very fragile at this point.”

Lots of sellers face a shortage just like the West Virginia pumpkin festival.

Importing pumpkins

Boyd Meadows, owner of Halfway Markets Inc. in Milton, says he’s importing pumpkins for many customers who can’t get them from their home state.

“I think that anywhere that anybody had irrigation, they got a lot of pumpkins,” Meadows said. “Anybody that did it just planting the pumpkins and depending on Mother Nature to give ’em water, got a very, very poor crop, if any.”

Meadows estimates that production is down two-thirds in West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of Ohio. Indiana, conversely, got a big crop, which Meadows attributes to adequate rainfall there and in northern Ohio.

“They got rain,” he said. “A lot of things are being brought in here from out there.”

Pennsylvania isn’t the only big pumpkin producer having a tough year.

Officials in New York, the nation’s No. 3 producer, say drought has hurt their western growers.

Michigan State University extension educator Ron Goldy estimates as much as half of his state’s crop has been lost because of hot, dry weather in the north. Heavy rain that left standing water in southern Michigan fields caused much of the crop to rot there, a problem Goldy says hit parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio as well.

Drought

Illinois, the No. 4 producer, has suffered a big hit, at least in the south.

Ask southern Illinois grower Sarah Frey what happened this summer and she’s quick to answer: “Thirty percent loss, at least. Hot, dry weather, drought. It was all those days that we had that were 105 degrees.”

Hot weather also pushed the harvest up three weeks, forcing Frey to convince the big retailers she supplies from more than 3,000 acres of pumpkins to take delivery early. About the only thing that turned out well for Frey was her miniature heirloom pumpkins. “They had a much better tolerance,” she said.

If the poor harvest has a bit of a silver lining, it’s that pumpkins are selling for higher prices.

Meadows says he’s paying 15 cents a pound, compared with a more normal price of 10 cents to 12 cents a pound. Of course, that price gets passed on to consumers, who he estimates will pay between 35 cents and 39 cents a pound, compared with the customary 29 cents a pound.

Yet they’ll be getting less.