You Don't Have to BEWARE Of The White Pumpkin

Look at what the farmed spawned, and yes, I am talking about the pumpkins...

As it is cold enough to bring out one of my father's favorite seasonal sayings; "Colder than a well digger's hind end!", I am busily planning my seed orders for the farm. One of my favorite vegetables to grow are pumpkins, so here I am to wax non-poetic but lovingly about these members of the squash family.

For most of my existence, I have had an innate fascination with pumpkins. Perhaps some of this personal intrigue was born due to my preschool. It was called The Pumpkin Patch, and you guessed it, right next to that magical place of play-dough and pasta was a big ol' patch of members of the Cucurbita family. An entire field of pumpkins taunted me every day as I stumbled into my daily dose of counting and story time.

The allure of pumpkins has stuck with me, as I have grown no less than half an acre of the round, festive squash for the last ten years. Some people get excited about pumpkin spice every fall, I get excited about the first fall frost so I can see just how many of the different colored globes that I actually grew. My kid-like excitement is shared by most of the children of the neighborhood, as every year I let them come to the field and pick a few pumpkins to take home for carving, decorating, target practice, or whatever.

Quite a few years ago, as I was perusing a seed catalog on the Web, I decided it was time to try one of those white pumpkins. I was always intrigued by the stark white glow of the pale pumpkins in the seed catalogs, and as I have a white dog, white horse, white turkey, and a white rabbit lurking around here, I thought, "Hmmm, why not a white pumpkin?"

Enter Lumina:

I ordered some of the Lumina cultivar from Mountain Valley Seeds, and gave them a go. They have quickly turned into one of my favorite varieties. I love wandering around the patch looking at the little white softballs as they are developing, and was pretty pleased with the uniformity of the variety's yield. They have orange flesh that makes some pretty tasty baked goods, and produced an impressive amount of seeds for the following year's crop or snacking. The Lumina pumpkins are nice and round, between fifteen and thirty pounds, and most importantly, they finish out in around ninety to one hundred days. This last bit of trivia is especially important to those that of us that have very little time between first and last frost dates.

The more craft-minded among us could probably find a lot to do with these pigment-lacking squash. I found all manner of creative endeavor relating to white pumpkins; some of which I would love to try, but alas, I am not the most crafty person to exist. In fact, other than the joy that I glean from growing the things, my most favorite pumpkin-related activity is exploding post-Halloween rotting squash with everything from shotgun slugs to Tannerite. Maybe this coming year I will try to decorate a few white pumpkins before I blow them up; it is resolution time after all, and I am all for personal growth.

Here are a few cool white pumpkin decorating ideas that I found:

Silhouettes:

Sharpie Owls

Lace covered

Both of the pictures used were taken by the author on my trusty iPhone.

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