I found another remarkable pumpkin, this time at a roadside stand miles from where I found the orange one I featured last week.

This beautiful winter squash is larger than the other one and has a chunky shape without the inset ribs. More like a roundish watermelon.

It’s mostly a deep green – almost black – with lovely white stripes, spots and a sprinkling of orange.

I asked if it had a name as a variety… nope. Just another calabaza. I think naming everything and saving and classifying specific varieties may be a European trait. It may also explain our collective neuroses about laws, codes, hedge sizes, etc… take the good with the bad, I suppose.

Here’s my new video on this beautiful find:

This one is a lot different from my previous market find, though I’m nearly 100% certain it’s the same species.

Here’s the other one:

And that one, again, is different from these pumpkins a friend is growing just up the road:

The other day I was riding in a friend’s car and passed a roadside stand in another town that had what looked like a solid black pumpkin. Unfortunately, my friend was in a hurry to get home and I didn’t want to bother him, so I let it drift by…

…you know, I think I may be a pumpkin kleptomaniac.

As I collect and catalog varieties, we will set goals for what we want to breed, picking traits and discarding others as the genetics allow. I have half a mind to just get the craziest collection of varieties I can, then plant them all together a couple of times, then save my favorite results and inbreed those lines.

For now I’m having fun in the collecting and cataloging stage… but the planting madness is coming soon. I can feel it.

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