Bumper New Jersey Pumpkin Crop Expected for Fall 2016

Attention, pumpkin lovers: Thanks to the very hot, mostly dry summer, New Jersey farmers are expecting a bumper crop of pumpkins this fall.

In fact, shoppers buying Jersey-grown pumpkins this year can expect pumpkins they buy now to last all the way through to Thanksgiving, and possibly even through Christmas, the state's farming experts say.

"Our crop is looking fantastic," said Chris DiGregorio, whose family owns Twin Pond Farm in Howell, NJ. "We usually have a good crop of pumpkins, but this year the crop is looking really, really good."

You can thank an arid summer for that. The dry second half of summer meant there was very little chance a certain fungus, known as phytophthora, could grow. Phytophthora thrives in damp, humid conditions. Pumpkins with phytophthora may look fine in the fields or at the farmstand, but they'll quickly rot within days of taking them home.

"Our biggest issue with pumpkins today in New Jersey is disease and that is enhanced by rainy, damp, humid days," explained Ben Casella, a field representative at the New Jersey Farm Bureau, a Trenton-based advocacy group that represents 11,000 of the state's farmers. "With that particular fungus, it spreads easily once you have it, and it spreads in years when we've had more rain. Once pumpkins have it, it causes them to rot more easily and it really limits the amount of pumpkins you can grow."

"Weather is really important," he continued. "Having the weather we've had this summer — it's been fairly dry through July, August and now into September — has allowed the pumpkins to really mature on the vine."

"It was an extremely hot summer. That definitely helped prevent the growth of the fungus," said DiGregorio. "And because we've had such a dry summer the pumpkins will last longer. We've had some years where the pumpkins will lay around until even after Christmas. This may be one of those years."

This fall, DiGregorio's Howell-based family farm will harvest 100 acres of pumpkins, gourds and fall squashes. They supply pumpkins to the Whole Foods in Middletown, Wall and Marlboro, and other farm stands in the area, such as Dearborn Market in Middletown.

Unlike sweet corn, pumpkin is not a major crop for New Jersey farmers. Most New Jersey pumpkin growers only grow enough to sell them at the retail level, in markets or at roadside farmstands. By comparison, in Pennsylvania, a major producer of the nation's pumpkins, most of their pumpkins are grown to be commercially processed, such as turned into puree or canned pumpkin pie mix.

Still, by Saturday, Oct. 1, pumpkin season will be in full swing, so expect to see them explode on market shelves.

"For the fall season, pumpkins are a big money maker," said DiGregorio. "We're out picking them now and we'll sell them right through Halloween."

Patch file photo/Rick Uldricks