By Clint Thompson
North Alabama is one of the few areas in the Southeast not suffering through drought conditions anymore. But the increased rainfall in recent weeks has caused concern for the region’s pumpkin growers looking to plant this year’s crop.
Eric Schavey, regional Extension agent in Northeast Alabama, talked about the challenge facing his area’s pumpkin farmers.
“We could use a few days of sunshine just so, it’ll be October before we know it, as far as prepping fields after strawberries, maybe looking at pumpkins and stuff like that. We need a few dry days just to throw some plastic down,” Schavey said. “I mean usually 4th of July, somewhere around in there is when we want pumpkins to go in.
“We usually hit a dry hot spell there in August. So, you really want those four weeks of growth, in there to get them to survive, have roots on and everything to just really survive the heat. That’s our, that’s our deal.”
Schavey said a dry period during pumpkin’s production season is not a bad thing for farmers.
“We’re okay with it not raining when we’ve got pumpkins for the most part, because we’re supplying irrigation. You’ve also got to keep a fungicide on them. And if it rains on them, then you can fight problems all year,” Schavey said. “But that’s just always been our bingo date is that first 10 days of July, we want pumpkins in because we want them for Halloween.”
Pumpkins are a popular crop to grow during the summer and be ready for the fall. So many growers grow them to take advantage of agritourism.
“It’s kind of a niche market here. You either have places that are growing them for, pumpkin patch or you’ve got the others that are growing mainly for a wholesale because somebody’s going to come and buy them in bulk,” Schavey said.