Pumpkin Quest 2023
The Quest for the perfect Pumpkin
What is PumpkinQuest?
Inspired by the work of the Culinary Breeding Network we decided to grow as many pumpkin varieties as possible to assess their growing styles, record their yield and EAT THEM! In having many varieties side by side we hoped not only to help identify which would perform best in our particular context but also provide a bit more insight for other growers and eaters. We wanted to celebrate and showcase this gloriously diverse crop and introduce its potential to more people.
Of course these figures can only be a record of what the plants which were grown yielded on this particular soil, tended in our particular way, in this particular season. The tasting as well is entirely subjective and dependent on the specific pumpkin that was prepared that day.
All this to say, Pumpkin Quest was mostly an excuse to get nerdy about a wonderful plant, celebrate diversity and have a party. Hopefully there are some useful insights for us or others to take forward in the kitchen or the field.
Why Pumpkins?
Cucurbita is a genus that includes pumpkins, squashes and some gourds. Once you explore the variety of shapes and sizes, tastes and textures all kinds of culinary and growing possibilities open up. Why stick to the standard bland tasting orange icon?
Their looks are as different as their names. Some sit bulging and broad, revelling in their glory. Some stand tall and pear shaped. They’re ellipsoidal and spherical, wide shouldered and slim, warty and smooth, tonne-like and diminutive. From pale and monochromatic and bright and bold to eerily enigmatic and elegantly dark, the world of pumpkins has something for everyone.
For growers too, there is huge variety in terms of sprawl, canopy cover and disease resistance. Given the amount of time and space needed to grow a pumpkin, knowing a little in advance about what you can expect in terms of plant health, yield, taste and storage can be invaluable in making the best seed selection.
So how do you make the best choice of pumpkin to grow or cook? Enter Pumpkin Quest!
A little more about pumpkins…
Pumpkins are extremely promiscuous… Each species willingly cross pollinates with others in its group and can create curious offspring. Seed saving true-to-type seeds is very difficult to guarantee unless you hand pollinate individual flowers.
We grew 27 varieties of which 24 made it to the tasting. The selection was based on what organic seeds we could source relatively easily, but there’s definitely a huge number of other varieties out there to be explored.
There are five common domesticated species of Cucurbita:
Ficifolia (e.g. Fig leaf gourd, Malabar gourd)
Native to the Americas, in contrast to other domesticated species that have highly variable fruit, the fruit of C.ficifolia is uniform in size, shape and colour - always oval and resembling a watermelon. It is the only species of Cucurbita to have black seeds.
Maxima (e.g. Hubbard, Buttercup)
Originating in South America it is known for modern varieties such as Hubbard, Buttercup and Turks Turban
Argyrosperma (e.g. Cushaw squash, Silver-seed gourd)
Formerly known as C.mixta - not often grown outside the Americas and not feature in Pupmkin Quest’23
Moschata (e.g. Long de Nice, Violina)
Species originating in either Central America or northern South America. Generally they are more tolerant of hot, humid weather than Maxima or Pepo.
Pepo (e.g. Jack-o-lantern, Delicata)
Yields various varieties of winter squash and pumpkin, but most widespread varieties belong to the subspecies Cucurbita Pepo subspecies.Pepo called ‘summer squash’ aka pattypan, zucchini or courgette
This means that if you want to save seeds from Pumpkins you really need to hand pollinate them (or only grow one variety of the species you are hoping to save seed from). We experimented with hand pollinating some of the rarer varieties this year - we won’t know until next year how successful we have been in this endeavour!
How were the pumpkins grown?
All varieties participating were sown on 27/05/23 in modules in the polytunnel using Sylvagrow potting compost. We planted 7 seeds of each variety and tracked how well they germinated.
Seedlings were transplanted 19/06/23 into a new field block at Lauriston Farm Market Garden that hadn’t been previously grown in. The 50m bed block had been prepared by mowing the pasture and applying a deep mulch of municipal compost to the beds (1.2M wide with 40cm pathways). Black Mypex was stretched over the beds and the edges buried. Holes were burnt every 60cm in one row in the centre of the bed. Temporary wind blocks were erected using rebar and wind nets.
After transplanting the plants were watered only a couple of time during the season. No further cultivation was made to the crop - the mypex kept most weeds suppressed & we didn’t add further amendments.
Some transplants were lost - inspection indicated that some had sustained significant damage from wireworm (Delicata). It’s unclear whether this indicates these varieties are particularly susceptible to wireworm damage, or if it was due to location in the bed having a greater pest population as the majority of lost crops were fairly close together. Some varieties didn’t produce any fruit or any fruits produced were very immature at time of harvest. (This included Butternut Squash & Violina). There are no tasting notes for these three varieties, but given their failure in the field we would be unlikely to try growing them again unless someone flagged a particular seed that was performing well for them in Scotland.
Towards the end of August mildew had set in amongst most of the crop though there was some variation in terms of which varieties were most susceptible. However it doesn’t seem to have impacted crop production.
Around the start of September the plants were inspected and we rated their canopy cover, sprawl and disease resistance. Sprawl and canopy cover ratings were entirely arbitrary so should be taken with caution. Also given the abundance of plant growth it was sometimes difficult to assess the extent of the sprawl (which only became more apparent when the plants properly died back/were being removed).
Some varieties were ready noticeably before others (Fictor & Uchiki Kuri). We kept an eye on them but left them in the field. All fruits were harvested over a couple of days as close together as possible. They were stored to cure in a polytunnel.
For the tasting party each variety was cut into 2cm cubes and a portion steamed (for 16 minutes) or roasted with sunflower oil at 230* for 15 minutes, stirred and roasted for another 15 minutes.
How were pumpkins rated?
Around 40 people joined us at the tasting party and were invited to taste and rate the pumpkins.
The Pumpkins got “KITCHEN” ratings
Looks (/10)
Steamed
Taste (/10)
Texture (/10)
Roasted
Taste (/10)
Texture (/10)
Each participant could pick their favourite pumpkin regardless of what actual scores they gave them.
Scores from each participant were consolidated and averaged to give a single average score for each category.
We combined Taste & Texture scores to give a % rating for Steamed & Roast as overall cooking methods
We generated a “TASTERS SCORE” represented as a % by adding the total scores from all looks, taste and texture. Where pumpkins received the same Taster Score we looked at the number of ‘Taster Favourite Points’ allocated - the one with more points was ranked first.
We provided “FIELD” ratings for each pumpkin
Germination success (/10)
Transplant success (/10)
Foliar disease resistance (/10)
Sprawl (/10)
Canopy cover (/10)
Avg. pumpkins per plant
Avg. weight per pumpkin (KG)
Avg. total food per plant (KG)(Avg. pumpkins per plant*Avg. weight per pumpkin)
We generated a “GROWERS SCORE” by considering the Growth (germination & transplant Survival) + Food Production (avg. food per plant) of each variety expressed as a percentage
We didn’t rate pumpkins for storability. Whilst we tried to be very careful handling and storing our pumpkins more than we expected they became blemished and wouldn’t store long term. Well cured and stored pumpkins can last months or years. Even some varieties known for their storage potential succumbed to damage so it didn’t seem fair to rate them based on what seems to be an issue with our handling. Something for us to improve on next year.
NB. It should also be noted that we didn’t have any growing data for Ebisu as this delicious contender was provider by another grower on the farm site.
We generated a final “OVERALL” rating for the pumpkins based on combining the “Growers Score” & “Tasters Score” but with a double weight towards Tasters Score (there’s no point us growing something unless people want to eat it!)
Final Results
Overall Winners
Tasters Awards
Growers Awards
Table of all ratings
Click here for a gallery view of all the pumpkins
(Scroll across chart below to see all scores for the variety)
What does this all mean?!
Peoples tastes are as diverse as pumpkins. What for some people was a favourite variety left others queasy.
Ultimately in the kitchen we’re interested not only in how a particular pumpkin tastes, but also it’s texture. This can vary based on it’s preparation of course but broadly I might categorise pumpkins into three flavour groups:
Juicy and stringy (often bright yellow/orange)> soups, mash
Sweet and creamy/smooth (mostly dark oranges or pinks)> pies, deserts, mash
Savoury and firm (normally blue or green) > gnocchi, curries, roasts and stews
People seemed to have a clear preference for one of these flavour groups over the others. So it might be worth figuring out which one floats your boat the most so you can make better picks in the market if you’re presented with a smorgasbord of choice.
It’s also worth knowing how varieties can be impacted by cooking styles. Obviously they all add something to what you’re cooking and knowing how they behave you might chose a pumpkin to break down and have more of a background role in your dish than front and centre in which case using a juicy pumpkin might be better in your stew than one which keeps a bite. The graph below shows you the % score each pumpkin got based on how it was cooked. In general people do seem to prefer roasting.
What growers want from a pumpkin varies too. Some folks are interested in growing the biggest pumpkin, others have limited space or loads of it. In the market garden we’re interested in a balance between plant health, productivity & delicious crops that people will buy.
If you only have a small space, choosing to grow a plant with a small sprawl would probably be best (e.g. Custard White, Blue Ballet or Buttercup). If you are wanting to use your Cucurbit as dual purpose ground cover, almost a cover crop, choosing something with a dense canopy and sprawl might be sensible (e.g. Granton Gourd or Turks Turban). At which point you might decide to go for the one with smaller fruits overall (e.g. Turks Turban)
Another way a grower might be interested in making a pumpkin plant selection is considering the number of pumpkins they might get vs. the size of the pumpkin. Where space is limited, or you are sharing a growing plot with other folks choosing a plant that is going to give you more than one fruit per plant could be better (so everyone gets a share!)
It’s also worth noting that at the market people often seem daunted by the bigger specimens (how will I cook that? How will it fit in my kitchen?!). As commercial growers this means we’ll probably lean towards growing smaller varieties - 1-1.5KG per Pumpkin seems to hit a sweet spot between enough serving generosity but not too much kitchen fear. That said, some of the larger speciality ones really do taste the best and getting people more comfortable with the idea of bulk preparing and freezing pumpkins for future dishes might help.
Pumpkins also seem to maybe have a bit of a brand problem… people still seem to associate them almost exclusively with Halloween or Thanksgiving. We need to find ways to increase peoples comfort with them as a generous winter food for the whole season - possibly there is something to calling them “Winter Squash” vs. “Pumpkin”. Also helping people expand their repertoire and comfort with how to cook them. A lot of people get stuck on them only being suitable for pumpkin soup, but the reality is they are incredibly diverse and can feature happily in soups, stews, casseroles, roasts, chips, hummus-ed, gnocchi, pies, puddings, breads and cakes (to mention just a few).
I looked at mapping the Growers Score vs. Tasters Scores - if varieties score highly for both they’d definitely be contenders for growing again. Where they score highly in one category but not another they are in the ‘maybe’ list. Where tasters have rated them highly but they performed less well in the field we’d probably try growing them again to see if it was just a tough year for them or if they really aren’t suited to our growing site. Where the grower score was high but tasters rated them low we’d definitely consider growing them again, but may need to do more to introduce folks to the best way to prepare and eat them.
In the future we’ll still grow a diverse array of pumpkins and continue experimenting with new varieties. We’ll probably have a core line of our favourite pumpkins that are trusty growers for us and consistent taster favourites. Then have a rotating cast of new and old varieties to try and grow. So, keep your eyes peeled to an invite for Pumpkin Quest 2024…
Wow Jossie, what an impressively comprehensive report! I really appreciate the effort you went to to analyse the results!