Heirloom Pumpkins

For many many years, we have grown, a wide variety of pumpkins. Big pumpkins, small pumpkins, tall pumpkins, wide pumpkins, round pumpkins, cooking pumpkins....our seed catalogs would devote a couple of pages to pumpkins, probably close to a hundred different varieties.

With all this selection and variety, it was amazing that these pumpkins had one thing in common: they were all orange! Every single one of them. We learned that pumpkins are orange.

But, but, but, that isn't the case! Just as not all tomatoes are red, not all pumpkins are orange. There are a lot of really neat pumpkins that have been making there way into the seed catalogs in recent years, and we're growing them all.

The funny thing is, many of them are being marketed as "new" and some of them are new, but a lot of them are old, first described over a century ago, but their undocumented history goes back a lot longer than that.

Pictured are a few that we're growing this year.
You "might" be able to get a bigger picture if you click the images, but the blogger isn't co-operating with me. In future I'll just do one image per post!

You can tell from the names, that a number of these pumpkins are from France. These heirloom pumpkins go back 100's of years. If, like me, your French needs help from a dictionary, don't worry, stick to the french names, they sound much more exotic than their English translations, and you'll be able to impress your friends and family with your pumpkin knowledge!


We have one Australian pumpkin, the land down under does not grow orange pumpkins, they are all blue, and grown to be eaten.



One Too Many is, to the best of our knowledge, a new modern variety.

Red Warty Thing is a pumpkin that dates back to a variety in the late 1800's called "Victor" -we like the new name!

Orange pumpkins? We grew lots of those too!