Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin

[mountianj]

lookin good

[Deleted]

Last year it didn't make it. This year it seems to be rooted in well (before squash bug arrival).  I vowed to water it every day if need be. If my OTCP is growing well, then everything is well. keh    

Have Seminole, too.  I gotta tape em this year for sure! 

[macmex]

At least if you want pure seed! My Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkins are looking good this year.

[macmex]

Here's a shot I took of my Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin plants, yesterday evening. They were planted, direct seeded into the garden on May 1, so that's 59 days. They're taking off. I should see flowers and fruit soon. For a couple weeks they were buried in weeds and I had to cut the weeds to free them. Now... well the weeds better look out!

[Deleted]

That looks wonderful!  I saw this morning that mine is about ready to burst into blooms.  It's a healthy but smaller plant but there are a greater number of blooms than I've seen before.   The seminole has one female bloom, but no males.  Kinda odd.  But it is going to take over that corner of my yard for sure.  

Wonderful stuff! 

[macmex]

Seminole will probably grow a bunch and then, all at once, start making flowers and fruit.

[heavyhitterokra]

That's beautiful, George!

[macmex]

Just realized that I kind of left things hanging last summer. To conclude: that particular garden got so overgrown that it was difficult to see the pumpkins growing in there. I had Mesquakie Indian corn and Cherokee Striped Cornhill, as well as Black Cherry tomatoes going in there as well. We had a long very dry spell in the middle of the summer and I failed to notice that my pumpkins were hurting for lack of water. They finally shut down, having produced less than half of what I had been expecting. The fruit were also smaller than usual, though, very usable. 

We have eaten a good number of them over the winter and today it is a little cool out. My wife commented that she'd like some pumpkin soup for lunch, so I dug up the last (well, I think it's the last) OTCP from over by our couch. Here's a photo of it after I washed it off and got it ready to cut.




It felt firm and healthy.

This is what I found when I cut it.



It looked really fresh; not at all dry.

Here's a picture of it after I scooped out the seed.



Finally, here it is as I was scooping it out to make soup. Looks just like a freshly harvested squash! 



I needed something from the deep freeze and ran across ... frozen squash from 2016! Oh well, it'll be good for next time!

[heavyhitterokra]

That is absolutely amazing! I always enjoy reading about things like that. The flesh was incredibly bright and fresh too. Did you notice if it was any less sweet or more sweet than usual because of its age?

[heavyhitterokra]

George,

Since my old-Timey Cornfield pumpkins never set fruit until after the 100°+ temperatures of July had passed, I have lots of little, green pumpkins that are likely to get killed by this week's upcoming hard freeze. Did you mention something earlier about eating green, Old-Timey Cornfield pumpkins as you would eat summer squash?

I think I'm going to be stuck with a boatload of them this week. I did get two that have begun to turn color though, so at least I ought to have seed for next year.

[woodeye]

Here it is, heavyhitterokra. George says you can eat green OTCP's like you have.

seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/680/growing-beans-on-corn-cornfield

[chrysanthemum]

I’ve never grown or eaten OTCP pumpkin, but I have eaten the green fruit of Seminole Pumpkin. I will say that my green fruit is very young, only about a week old, when I use it as a summer squash. I don’t know if you have any idea how old your still green ones are, but they may already be changing from the inside out. macmex will have better advice for OTCP, though.

[macmex]

I eat them as summer squash when they are green and their skin is still tender. Once the skin is tough I don't use them that way. If they're in that awkward stage of being too green to finish ripening but too mature to be eaten as summer squash, I use them for stock feed. My chickens, in particular, love to eat them. In fact, I have to be careful during the growing season, as the chickens will sometimes find a maturing pumpkin and ruin it by peaking a hole in it.

This year I have a smaller harvest than usual. Of course the harvest of everything seems much smaller this year. Still, I think we'll have just enough of these for our needs. They fruit is also much smaller than in other years. So far the average size has been around 8-10 lb.

[macmex]

Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin characteristically likes to escape and travel around, or even outside the garden. I actually like this, though that's in part because, at their best, my gardens are rampant and often unruly, yet productive. Every year I search diligently for this pumpkins, hoping to get them all in before a true freeze. Well, last fall I missed one.



This one had hopped the fence and hid in some weeds, out at the corner of our property, right along the roadside! I found it December 26, 2023 when we were coming out of the single digit cold. I gave it to the chickens.

[chrysanthemum]

Lucky chickens!