I have been meaning to show you my pumpkin harvest for ages. I finished cropping about a month ago, which is fairly normal in my growing season. It's getting around to writing it up that's the hard part! There are six types of pumpkins & squashes on the table. Five I planted purposefully and one volunteered. I planted the orange skinned Australian butter pumpkin (my favourite). It has a really beautiful taste and is a deep orange colour inside as well. I only harvested 4 of those (one already devoured). The other pale organey brown ones in front are a fairly common butternut pumpkin in Australia. The seeds are all stored in the bulby end and they roast really nicely - you can even keep the skin on when you roast it (cut up of course). These don't store as well as the others so we tend to eat them first. Then the yellow and green stripy ones are a squash (Delicata). In previous years they were much more yellowy-orangy between the green stripes. These seeds came from a different supplier this year so perhaps it's just natural variation. Then the greeny grey ones are Baby Blue, Crown Prince and not sure what the volunteer is (I'm assuming a Crown Prince as I did plant those last year as well and it grew up from where we had the chicken shed/compost heap).
Here's the same crop from another view...
From this angle you can see the unripened butternuts and some of the late harvest rockmelons. It was such a warm autumn and the melons kept growing. I must admit once I feel a season is over I don't much feel like eating the last season's crops (except for the storage type crops). I felt the same about the few tomatoes that carried on well into the end of May. It just seemed odd - and then by the time you get to the end of the season, you've kind of eaten your fill - tomatoes every day - melons not quite so frequently but still- a lot!
Anyway, I'm rather thrilled with my pumpkin harvest. For the past few years, my goal has been 12 pumpkins - one for each month until the next season's harvest. However, for the past two years I've done better than that. I have already given away a few and will continue to find homes for the grey ones.
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