Heat, dry weather making for smaller pumpkins this fall

Pumpkin patches on several Canadian farms have struggled with their crops this year due to drought and heat.

That means your Halloween jack-o’-lanterns could be smaller than usual.

Farmers west and south of Montreal say they’re seeing smaller pumpkins in their patches this season — if any at all.

Philip Quinn of Quinn Farm in Notre-Dame-de-L’Île-Perrot says some of his pumpkin varieties are 30 per cent smaller than expected, and there are fewer of them.

“Usually a nice healthy plant will have five or six fruit on it for this variety ... But we’re seeing plants here with just one single large fruit and then maybe a smaller fruit on it,” he says.

Quinn says irrigation saved his crops during this hot and dry summer.

“We have a main line at the end of the field and pumping water down each drip tape,” he explains.

Meanwhile, south of Montréal in the Rougemont area, Philippe Beauregard of Potager Mont-Rouge says he had just enough rain to get by.

“We were kind of lucky,” he says.

Both farmers say the great big pumpkins of legend that are often seen in farming contests will be few and far between this autumn.

“A soccer ball size is probably the most popular pumpkin that you’ll have for this coming fall,” says Beauregard.

Quinn and Beauregard both say they won’t increase prices, but they also don’t have an overabundance of stock of those soccer ball-sized gourds.

They stress that farming is hard work, especially as weather patterns become more unpredictable.

“It is taking a lot of work to get these to fruition,” Quinn says while cradling a big pumpkin.

Montrealers should pick their pumpkins in the patch while they can.

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