The Herbarium
Part IV · Fruit & vegetable
Herb. No. 199
Pumpkin
Cucurbita pepo
Cucurbitaceae
A Mesoamerican winter squash we carved into a face — the food is the dry, sweet flesh and the seed.
Ripe winter squash of named food varieties. Ornamental gourds and bitter pepos are not pie.
- Parts used
- Ripe flesh · Seed
- Traditional notes
- Winter staple · Roasted seed · Traditional pie and soup
- Grow · USDA 6b
- Tender annual. A long warm season. After frost, in hills. Not a windowsill crop. In work: May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct
- Harvest
- When the rind resists a thumbnail and the stem corks. Before a hard frost.
- Cure 10 days warm for storage.
- A pie pumpkin is a variety, not any orange globe.
Safety
Bitter cucurbit Ornamental gourd
Companions
Plant with Corn, Green bean, Nasturtium, Zucchini.
Keep apart from Potato.
Lore
The Irish carved turnips. America had pumpkins, so the face moved house. Indigenous Three Sisters agriculture already had the squash under the corn. Canned pie filling is Hubbard or a Dickinson moschata more often than the porch pumpkin, which is a useful honesty in November.
The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.