Typically the Friday Footnote focuses on historical aspects of agricultural education and rural America from decades ago. Since we celebrated Halloween yesterday with its scary pumpkins and are entering the fall of the year, this Footnote will have an autumn vibe. We are going to take a close look at pumpkins and then shine the spotlight on an agriculture teacher and his pumpkin growing expertise. Dr. David Trinklein, an Extension specialist at the University of Missouri, is the co-author of this Footnote. He supplied the technical and historical information about pumpkins.
Figure 1. A spooky Jack-o-Lantern
How Much Do You Know About Pumpkins?
We have created a short quiz to test your knowledge of pumpkins. The answers can be found in the text that follows the quiz.
- Pumpkins belong to the genus
- Curcubita
- Solanum
- Malus
- Arachis
- Archeological evidence suggests that pumpkins are native to
- Western Europe including England
- Persia and the Middle East
- The Americas
- Northern Africa including Egypt
- Pumpkins have been cultivated for about
- 500 years
- 1,000 years
- 2,500 years
- 5,500 years
- The idea of carving pumpkins (creating Jack-o-Lanterns) originated with the
- English
- Irish
- Native Americans
- Egyptians
- The Guinness world record largest pumpkin weighed
- 586 pounds
- 1,003 pounds
- 2,749 pounds
- 3,111 pounds
Learning about Pumpkins
Few horticultural crops signal the arrival of autumn more so than pumpkin. This fall, millions of Americans will make an annual pilgrimage to a retail outlet to purchase a vegetable they (unfortunately) are very unlikely to eat. While many people throughout the world use pumpkin as a staple in their daily diet, in the United States this colorful member of the Cucurbitaceae (gourd) family is used primarily for decoration. Halloween and Thanksgiving just would not be complete without pumpkins to add a festive air to the observation of these two events.
Pumpkin derived its name from the Greek word “pepon” which, literally interpreted, means “large melon”. The French word for “pepon” was “pompon” and the English changed the latter to “pumpion”. American colonists are credited with changing “pumpion” to “pumpkin”, the name which still is associated with this vegetable.
Pumpkins belong to what genus?
Pumpkin is somewhat of a generic name assigned to several members of the genus Curcubita. They include C. maxima, C. moschata and C. pepo. The names pumpkin and winter squash commonly are used for all of these species also. However, most authorities place the large, orange fruit sold for autumn decoration in the species C. maxima, and assign winter squash as a common name to the other two species. Interestingly, the canned product sold for making pumpkin pies actually is C. moschata, a species of winter squash.
Archeological evidence suggests that pumpkins are native to the Americas and have been cultivated for about 5,500 years.
Archeological evidence suggests that pumpkins and winter squash are native to the Americas from the southwestern part of what is now the United States through Mexico and Central America and south into Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Pumpkins have been cultivated since about 3500 B.C. rivaling it with maize (corn) as one of the oldest known crops in the western hemisphere. Native Americans are said to have roasted long strips of pumpkin on an open fire and then consumed them. They also dried pumpkin strips and wove them into mats.
Columbus was known to have taken pumpkin seeds back to Europe on one of his excursions. However, pumpkins are warm season vegetables that require a relatively long growing season. Thus, they never have gained popularity in northern Europe and the British Isles where the summer temperatures are not conducive to their growth.
Presumably, American colonists relied heavily on pumpkin as a food source as evidenced by this poem (circa 1630):
“For pottage and puddings and custard and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies:
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undoon.”
One way colonists are thought to have prepared pumpkins was to slice off their tops, remove the seeds and refill the inside with a mixture of milk, spices and honey. The resultant concoction was baked in hot ashes and is said to be the origin of our modern pumpkin pie.
The idea of carving pumpkins (creating Jack-o-Lanterns) originated with the Irish.
Jack-o-lanterns originated in Ireland where, according to Irish myth, a notorious character by the name of “Stingy Jack” succeeded in tricking the devil on several occasions through the course of his life, much to the devil’s annoyance. Upon his death, Stingy Jack appeared at the gates of hell to learn his eternal fate. The devil, having been fooled by him on several prior occasions, refused to let him enter. Instead, he sent Jack off into the dark night with a burning lump of coal to guide his way. According to legend, Jack put the glowing coal into a hollowed out turnip and has been roaming the Earth ever since.
Immigrants arriving in America continued the tradition of making jack-o-lanterns but found pumpkins much easier to carve than turnips. The association of jack-o-lanterns with Halloween is related to the Celtic festival of Samhain, observed on October 31st–the Celtic equivalent to our New Year’s Eve. The Celts believed the spirits of the dead (including Stingy Jack) roamed the earth on that night.
The Guinness world record largest pumpkin weighed 2,749 pounds.
There are various big pumpkin competitions at local and state fairs along with some national and international competitions. One of the most popular is the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival in California. This event occurs in mid-October and attracts pumpkin growers from across the country.
The festival is sponsored by a volunteer, non-profit group and was started in 1971 to revitalize the main street in the town of Half Moon Bay. The event kicks off with the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. The largest pumpkin wins a prize of $9 per pound. If the pumpkin breaks the world record, the prize is $30,000.
Figure 2. The four finalist pumpkins in 2023.
Photo from Eric Risberg of the Associated Press.
The winner of the 2024 competition was Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota. His pumpkin weighed 2,471 pounds which yielded a prize of $22,239. It took Travis 35 hours to transport the pumpkin with his truck and trailer from Minnesota to California.
Figure 3. The 2024 winning pumpkin. From the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival website.
So who is Travis Gienger? He is an agriculture teacher, specializing in horticulture at Anoka Technical College in Minnesota. He is a 2003 graduate from the University of Minnesota with a degree in agricultural education.
Travis has been growing pumpkins for nearly 30 years. He learned how to grow large pumpkins from his father. Unlike some pumpkin growers Travis grows his pumpkins outside in the Minnesota weather instead of in a controlled climate like some contestants.
Winning the Half Moon Bay event is becoming a habit with Travis. He has won the event four times. In 2023 Travis grew a 2,749 pumpkin that was recognized by Guinness as the world record and won him a $30,000 prize. This pumpkin was named Michael Jordan.
Figure 4. The 2023 world champion pumpkin. Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2023.
Concluding Remarks
Who says teaching can’t be fun? At this time of the year we could use pumpkins as a focal point in our teaching and have fun doing it. Some teaching ideas might be to examine pumpkins as livestock feed, examine the use of pumpkins in early American agriculture, learn scientific nomenclature, explore how to grow giant pumpkins, study how to market pumpkins, look at various methods of using pumpkins in food science, and the list goes on.
To spice up our teaching (and I am not referring to pumpkin spice) we could have a pumpkin carving contest in our classes, cook pumpkin themed foods, or show videos of the Half Moon Bay pumpkin festival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUPMQI7Grtw). You might even want to have a pumpkin growing competition for your students.
As teachers we need to constantly search for ways to energize our teaching to make learning more enjoyable. If you are attending the NAAE/ACTE convention in San Antonio in December I would love to see you at a workshop I am conducting titled “Turning “HaHa” into “Aha” – Using Humor in the Classroom.” This will be presented at 3:00 PM on Thursday. Dec. 5 in Room 207A in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
References
Overland, Adam (Fall, 2024). The Pumpkin King, Minnesota Alumni.
Trinklein, David (2013, October 4). Pumpkin: A Brief History. University of Missouri.