Farm operations manager Andy Bugher discusses how the pumpkin crop fared despite early spring rains and a subsequent drought, highlighting successful insect control and disease prevention. The yield looks promising, thanks to favorable temperatures and the absence of severe weather.
Farm operations manager Andy Bugher says they were worried about the pumpkins at first when the spring rains hit. Farm operations manager Andy Bugher says they were worried about the pumpkins at first when the spring rains hit.
"It did rain a lot early when the plants were still really young. Scared us a little bit from time to time because we're on a hill here where we planted, and so we're actually worried about the really heavy rains washing the plants out," Bugher said. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Once the drought set in, the pumpkins were established and were able to handle the heat. "A lot of the temperature at certain times in pumpkins really affects how they put on a female flower rather than a male flower, so that can affect how big our yield is," Bugher explained. "The temperatures during that drought were hot but not excessively hot, so that helped us to still get enough female blossoms on the plants." Compared to last year's drought, a lot of pumpkins were lost. There was also a problem with diseases, which Bugher says was not a problem this year. This year, we've done a great job with insect control. The lack of rain is good for pumpkins in a disease sense. It doesn't bring in some of the more tropical diseases. We didn't have any real hurricane storms come up, and that always brings in a lot of powdery mildew, downy mildew, and other things that are really bad for pumpkins," Bugher said."A small frost will maybe wilt the leaves a little bit, but the pumpkins have pretty strong skin, and so they can handle that. A heavy freeze can burn, actually burn the skin of the pumpkin a little bit, and cause it to go soft," Bugher added.
Pumpkins Weather Drought Harvest Farming
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