As you plan your seed-buying for spring, you really should try Seminole pumpkins. There’s a reason I sing their praises in my book Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening… it’s because they’re totally crazy easy to grow!
As reader Mike Healy commented recently on The Seminole Pumpkin Project page:
“This is our fourth year of growing this amazing crop!
In 2016 we had 1 planned and 2 inadvertent Seminole pumpkin crops!
Our planned crop was seeds saved from our 2015 crop planted into two-15 gallon containers. The seeds germinated, the vines took off, covering most of our 50’ X 12’ space reserved for SPs! Not satisfied, our SP vines grew over and through our 6’ high shadow box fence into our Neighbors yard. They let the vines grow and had their first crop of SP!
Later we added SP pulp to our compost pile…the seeds in that pulp took off, producing fruit in our compost pile before heading over and through the shadowbox fence, giving our neighbors a 2nd crop of SP!
Later we gave SP pulp to our laying hens; some of the seeds escaped the chickens peaks, germinated, escaped the run, and covered an area in front of the coop, producing our third crop!
Seminole pumpkins-an amazing crop!”
Gotta love something that grows so easily.
Big Green Seminole Pumpkins?
Another reader comments:
“I have what I’m told are seminole pumpkins. I got the seed from a local seed dealer in oviedo, florida.
They are all green like this photo:
http://oldsalem.quadland.org/files/2014/10/Seminole-Squash-fruit-green.jpg
But, they are huge. several have to be over ten pounds already and they are all still that same color green.”
My response was:
“They look like a variety of Seminole pumpkin to me. A few of mine hit 14lbs! Once fully ripe (as in, the stem of the fruit has yellowed up) and brought inside to cure, the green ones often start to turn tan over time.”
As you can see on the Seminole Pumpkin Project page, Seminole pumpkins are a wide-ranging land race vegetable rather than a tight breed. That’s why I started breeding them for specific qualities.
When I get some land I’ll get back to it.
Why not get yourself some Seminole pumpkin seeds for your spring garden? They grow half-wild and make delicious pumpkins that will usually store on your shelf all the way until next Christmas.
And now you don’t have to take just my word for it. The Seminole pumpkin testimonies keep rolling in.