Vast majority of pumpkins end up in landfill

[rashore]

On 10/25/2019 at 4:24 PM, Doug1029 said:

My wife does a lot of canning.  The canner has enough water to cover the jars.  Beyond that, you'll have to ask her.  She's a member of the Rebel Canners group - Facebook, I think.

I've been wondering just how edible those giant pumpkins are.

Doug

Been mulling this.. and though I don't FB, I do check in with alt preserving.. And your wife is braver than I. Not quite sure if I should applaud or be appalled. Probably both.

I wondered about the giants too... most of the varieties used should yield good flesh. And fine big seeds for eating. But are usually fed and watered to the point of maybe not so good eats. But still, dozens of contests for biggest pumpkins, often with fruits in several hundreds of pounds to over a ton a pop.. might make for a million or so of pounds.. instead of smashing drops those could go to benefit human or animal feeding.

 

 

[Habitat]

8 hours ago, rashore said:

I don't know about everywhere around the U.S., but around me there's a bunch. Green, gold, and white acorn, carnival, sweet dumpling, delicata, butternut, butterkin, blue and green hubbards, red and green kabocha, spaghetti, pie pumpkin, red kuri, buttercup, ambercup, turban, gold nugget, sweet meat, black futsu... getting into the ones that are thought of more for decor than eating, pink banana, Cinderella , cheese, marina di chioggia, galeux d'eysines, lunar white, fairytale, wolf.... and a couple kinds of field ones for Jack o'lanterns. Often there's a few others that show up, but not on a regular basis. Good varieties of gourds too.

Turnips are around, but not terribly popular and often a bit pricey. Usually more expensive than squashes and pumpkins this time of year.

Right, well but the only name there familiar to me is "butternut" and that is probably not the same thing either. When I was a kid, there was probably only one variety commonly on sale, "Queensland Blue". We are pumpkin-deprived !