Sarah TaberIn honor of Halloween, it's time for GOURD FACTS.
For every donation to the link below I will post one (1) fact about gourds, pumpkins, squash, and all the ways we use them. It's a really useful family of plants!
We don't know for sure, but two things are definitely true about bottle gourds.
-They float
-They can dry up & hold their seeds for a really long time.
Especially for plants in arid areas, floating is a good strategy to spread your seeds!
1. Grow near water (or a wash where water flows sometimes).
2. Grow fruits & let them dry up into little buoys full of seeds.
3. Wait for a flood to carry them wherever else the water goes.
I see you guys! We're finishing up one last event, should be back a little before 6 👋
The first members of the squash family probably weren't grown for food. They were hard and/or bitter!
Instead, people probably first started keeping them around to dry out & use as containers.
After all, you can eat a lot of things. But there are only so many lightweight, waterproof containers out there.
If baskets are too leaky and pottery's too heavy for what you need to do, bottle gourds are your best bet!
ack o'lanterns are from Europe, but squash aren't.
So before Europe found squash, they were making jack o'lanterns out of root vegetables. Turnips, rutabagas, beets, etc.
Credit where it's due, they really nail the "creepy" vibe.
When people first started eating squash, we're pretty sure it wasn't the flesh- it was the seeds!
Squash's seeds are oily & tasty. The flesh on early squash was still hard, bitter, or both.
Eventually, as people started growing a lot of squash, some of them would naturally have flesh that was less bitter. People got adventurous, started cooking it, and selecting for sweeter & sweeter fruits.
And now there's edible squash!
The classic "Cinderella" pumpkins don't do well in tropical and subtropical conditions.
But calabaza-type squash love it.
Had good luck with Kang Kob pumpkins in the NC sandhills.
Do they look weird? Sure. Are they tasty & grow well? Yes! They're sturdy and handle our challenging weather & soil really well.
Seminole pumpkins have a RANGE on looks & preferred weather. The Seminole people bred them to handle Florida's steamy weather- and then the US forced a lot of Seminoles to Oklahoma in 1849.
So now some Seminole pumpkin lines are adapted to Florida, and some to Oklahoma.
You have to put them on a pallet when they're still a little baby pumpkin. So you can forklift them out of the field.
A little over a decade ago, giant pumpkin growers were chasing a 2,000lb pumpkin. A one-ton squash.
Now, we've blown through that and growers are eyeing the 3,000lb limit.
We have no idea what the maximum size for a pumpkin IS.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/giant-pumpkin-world-record/680337/
My camera shoots fascistsOmg. I had to zoom in to make sure this picture is what I thought it was. 😂😂
Giant pumpkins usually wind up getting smushed by gravity. It's kind of charming. A "yeah I'm huge but I'm tired, be nice to me" energy.
And it's trick or treating o'clock! Showtime! Thanks for participating, have a good night everyone!
BoneHouseWasps🔶🇬🇧🇪🇺@sarahtaber Had to look up what a rutabaga was - we call theme 'swedes' in the UK.
MY favourite pumpkin fact is that Big Jim Martin from Faith no More is (or was) a champion pumpkin farmer.
https://blabbermouth.net/news/former-faith-no-more-guitarist-grows-monster-pumpkins
Former FAITH NO MORE Guitarist Grows Monster Pumpkins
Former FAITH NO MORE guitarist Jim Martin, who has reinvented himself as a pumpkin grower, won for the heaviest pumpkin grown in California at the 30th Annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, which was held on October 13 in Half Moon Bay, California. Martin took fourth place overall wit...
Barry Goldman@sarahtaber wonder if hey could be grown successfully submerged in water!
Tim McCormack@barrygoldman1 @sarahtaber Perhaps if they were surrounded by a large plastic bag to avoid rot? It would be quite the undertaking but yeah, maybe that would allow a rounder shape.
Eric LawtonA challenge for the International Space Station! 😀
Mme Zabet@sarahtaber Big mood, especially the day after Halloween. XD
Bynkii@sarahtaber so. many. pies.
noplasticshower@sarahtaber same thing happened to Americans. Super size it.
Cat West@sarahtaber What do they do with all these ginormous pumpkins AFTER? That’s a hella compost pile.
oisin@sarahtaber unbelievable 🤯
Ms. Que Banh@sarahtaber Giant pumpkin growers are very passionate about their giant pumpkins! A few of them on the island here are quite obsessed with trying to win biggest pumpkin of the year awards!
@sarahtaber Giant pumpkin winners in recent BC history:
https://www.saanichnews.com/news/the-great-pumpkin-arrives-in-armstrong-via-kelowna-grower-7596475
Lisa J. Warner / Lisa Luv🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃*Holy Cow!*Amazing!🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃
Robyn@sarahtaber
They look a lot like our regular pumpkins here in Aotearoa
They look a lot like our regular pumpkins here in Aotearoa
crzwdjk ✅ @sarahtaber Squash flowers are also a reasonably popular taco filling in Mexico.
dark was the night 🌚@sarahtaber those pumpkin seeds ( locals here often call them "pepitas" ) are soooo yummy toasted
Joan of Contention 😷@sarahtaber Greetings from Ireland, where the creepy turnips come from. You're welcome! 👋🏼🎃
Ghost turnip | National Museum of Ireland
In Ireland, at Halloween, we carved turnips to create scary-faced lanterns. The term, Jack o’ Lanterns, takes its name from the folktale about Jack, who was welcome neither in Heaven or Hell and was destined to wander the countryside forever, with just a lantern to light the way.
Drifthood@sarahtaber in the south of germany, we still do use sugar beets
Steve Riggins
Giliell@sarahtaber My mum, born and raised in Germany, 1952 onwards, remembers having made lanterns from beets. Later rutabaga and other large beets were considered "poor people's food" and no longer grown, so the tradition was lost until we discovered pumpkins. By now you can buy rutabaga again. But nobody uses them to make lanterns anymore.
Gabrielle Kay@sarahtaber We used turnips not that long ago... Oh, okay, 1970s. 😆
Mr. Lance E Sloan (IRL) 👤@sarahtaber
Years ago, I had some neighbors who used turnips or beets to make Jack O'lanterns. It was quite a rustic, witchy look.
#HappyHalloween🎃☠️👻😱
Years ago, I had some neighbors who used turnips or beets to make Jack O'lanterns. It was quite a rustic, witchy look.
#HappyHalloween🎃☠️👻😱
JevidL@sarahtaber You just reminded me of making gourd bird houses as a kid.
Fascinating how tools became food.
Irenes (many)@sarahtaber whoa!!!!! that makes a ton of sense. super cool.
Bennet
Richard Hector@sarahtaber Great thread, thanks :-) I'm wondering if this can be the answer to some plastic uses. Perhaps they could be grown in boxes to constrain their shape?
@sarahtaber i remember buying some curvy 3ft long 6" thck yellow ones in college. kept them around as pets. eventually we had a sword battle with 2 of them...
but the third lasted for YEARS one day i noticed it was getting wrinkly and feared it would collapse in iccor so i cut it open. no, still just SLOOOWLY drying out. amazing.