Palouse pumpkins ripe for picking
August 31, 2015
Pumpkins bring to mind the colorful leaves and gray skies of fall; however, this year’s gourds are ripe sooner than usual.
Pumpkins, as well as other crops, of the Palouse are ready for harvesting much earlier.
The reason for this is no mystery.
“It’s the heat,” said Karen A. Sanguinet, assistant professor at the department of crop and soil sciences. “The biggest factor in the speed of growth and development in any crop is temperature.”
When crops are subjected to abnormally higher heat than what they are accustomed to, the plant’s metabolism increases and it grows faster, Sanguinet said.
But the heat and corresponding early harvest are not all bad.
This year has been abnormal but has yielded more, quality crops earlier in the year; tomatoes are also growing quicker and larger this year, said Scott McBeath, a Pullman Farmer’s Market volunteer.
“There is a happy medium between the pumpkins being on the vine for too long and not long enough, but usually the vine keeps the pumpkin healthy,” he said.
Tree fruit has also been affected by the heat and early spring, said to Deb A. Pehrson, the farm manager of WSU’s R.B. Tukey Horticulture Orchard.
She said the heat was a major factor in the fruit ripening earlier this year, and the main reason for the fruit’s rapid growth was the early Pullman spring.
The harvest will be in September this year, a few weeks earlier than usual.
Reporting by Dennis Farrell