5 Things About Pumpkins Before Visiting Patches Across The Nation

ACROSS AMERICA — Pumpkins, and the upcoming fall season, are now on the minds of many in all 50 states.

With trips to local pumpkin patches and fields already in the works, it might be a good idea to brush up on everything pumpkin-related before heading out to the biggest pumpkin farms.

Here are five things you may have been wondering about pumpkins:

1. How They Grow

It’s not only large pumpkin fields that produce the orange, fall-time tradition. Pumpkins can be grown in regular back yards, too, but only if there’s enough space.

Pumpkins are often referred to as a “garden gorilla,” gardening experts at HGTV said in a guide on how to grow pumpkins. The vines of the large plants sprawl and expand throughout the growing season, much like watermelons. They grow quickly, and can take out other plants if not contained.

Backyard gardeners have been known to tuck the pumpkin plants along the edges of a vegetable garden, although some let their pumpkin vines ramble across the yard.

2. Where They Grow

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says six states — Illinois, California, Indiana, Michigan. Virginia and Texas — are responsible for 40 percent of pumpkin acres harvested. Together, they average between 4,700 and 5,600 acres of pumpkins a year, according to the USDA. Illinois tops the list of pumpkin-producing states, harvesting about 10,900 acres in 2019. The other states among the top six have all averaged between 4,700 and 5,600 acres per year.

3. Best Pumpkin Patches In America

A Reader’s Digest article posted earlier this summer has listed their picks for the best pumpkin patches in every state.

Planning a long fall trip? A “Drive The Nation” blog posted a few years back shows five of the biggest pumpkin farms in the United States: The Great Pumpkin Farm, Clarence, New York; Cool Patch Pumpkins, Dixon, California; Peanuts Pumpkin Patch Express, Bryson City, North Carolina; Frey Farms, Keenes, Illinois; and Craven Farm, Snohomish, Washington.

4. Heaviest Pumpkins Ever Recorded

Pumpkins can come big or small, recent years have produced some of the biggest ever grown.

The heaviest pumpkin of all-time was grown in Belgium and weighed 2,624 pounds, according to History.com. In the United States, the record for heaviest pumpkin ever was set in New Hampshire in 2018. A pumpkin grown there weighed 2,528 pounds.

5. The Halloween Connection

As pumpkins are often turned into jack-o’-lanterns after they are picked from the patches and fields, some may wonder why they have been so closely associated with Halloween.

Pumpkins are often carved into jack-o’-lanterns after they are picked from the patches and fields, but how did they come to be so closely associated with Halloween?

The practice of decorating jack-o’-lanterns actually began in Ireland, according to History.com. The name jack-o’-lantern cones from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, where it became interwoven with other Halloween festivities.