Peculiar pumpkins popular at local patches: Andrew Coppolino

A cool, rainy August — the tenth wettest year in a century of local weather-record history, the University of Waterloo weather station reports — hasn't put a damper on this fall's pumpkin crop.

Byron and Karen Good, co-owners of Good Family Pumpkins in Waterloo, say things are looking good for their winter squash ready for the season starting next weekend.

"We're still trying to figure out what our pumpkin crop is going to look like once the leaves die back. But this is a beautiful sunny day and what we need to ripen things up. We have gotten a lot of rain here. Luckily not as much as some other places," Karen Good said during a recent visit.

The Good's nine hectares of pumpkins, squash and gourds are located amid fields of food-grade soybeans, signs for firewood for sale and corn as high as an elephant's eye near Breslau, but there's more to the fields than big orange globes — there are about 100 varieties, in fact, much of which you can eat.

Botanically, squash, gourds and pumpkins are members of the cucurbits family and over the years many varieties have come into production for pumpkin pickers to choose from rather than just the definitive Standard Orange for jack-o'-lanterns.

'A unique crop'

Across the city, strawberries and sweet corn often come to mind first when you're pulling up to Herrle's Country Farm Market in St. Agatha, but amid 200 acres of fruits and vegetables, they also grow 10 acres of pumpkins, James Herrle says.

"Pumpkins are a unique crop. I just love hearing the bees in late July and August," Herrle said.

Pumpkins at Herrle's are pre-picked and include the traditional orange jack-o'-lantern variety as well as coloured, striped and warty varieties. 

Wherever you're buying a pumpkin, the outside quality can be an indicator of inside quality: look for ones that don't have cracks, bruises or depressions on their ribs.

And whatever, its colour, the skin should be nice and shiny and the pumpkin should generally feel heavy relative to its size. The stem should be firm and solid – pumpkin purveyors prefer you not pick up your pumpkin by the peduncle in case it pops off.

People want unique pumpkins

Glance across many pumpkin patches and the varying colours and markings are impressive: pinks and blues appear, along with white and dusty grey pumpkins and ones that are striated, speckled, and orange-white striped Blaze pumpkins that look like flames beside knobbly ones that look like they are blighted (but are not).

Good, whose family has grown and sold pumpkins since 1994 when the kids started selling them on the roadside, says the market has evolved toward unusual and unique varieties.

"A lot more people are buying the more decorative pumpkins and gourds. Decorating with them has become really popular and that's what a lot more seed companies are going after," Good said.

That means varieties such as ghostly Baby Boo and Casper, Turk's Turban, the deeply-ribbed pink Porcelain Doll, Jack-Be-Little, the blue-grey heirloom Jarrahdale from Australia and the somewhat alarming knobbly one known as the Warty Goblin F1 Hybrid.

Pepitas from Naked Seeded pumpkins are larger than you might find in your salad at a restaurant but are marvellous roasted with olive oil and salt, Good says.

She says the creamy pumpkin with orange "veins" is called "One Too Many" and admits she has no idea who comes up the various names.

"It apparently resembles the bloodshot eyes of someone who's had too much to drink. It's good for pies and great for decorating or carving," she said. "Even though this variety has been around for a couple of years, this is our first year growing it."

The Goods also add some stencilled artwork to their pumpkins and gourds: images of spiders (on a pumpkin variety called, appropriately, "Shiver"), ghosts, bats, autumn leaves, a witch's hat and words like "fall" and "thankful" have been drawn into the skin's surface with a Dremel.

"We do the illustrations when the pumpkins are green and still growing," Good says. "The design grows as the pumpkin grows."

Not just a decoration

Aside from the colours and their potential for decorating, many squash pumpkins you purchase perform well at the supper table. A favourite kitchen ingredient for Good is Autumn Frost, a pinkish squash that looks link an elongated pumpkin.

"It's really nice and sweet and tastes a little bit like butternut squash but a little sweeter and with a different consistency. I've made soup and loaves with it. It's delicious to bake with," she says.

And a note for post-Halloween: if you don't want to throw away your jack-o'-lanterns and decorative squashes after Oct. 31, and don't have access to green-bin composting, you can deliver the entire Cucurbit family to local farmers accepting them as crunchy snacks for their livestock rather than sending them to landfill.

As they say, what grows together goes together.