Welcome to the Organic Pumpkin Patch!

It turns out that Oregon is an ideal place to grow pumpkins organically. Here you see one of our organic farm managers, Myrick, with some just-ripening pumpkins in Medford in early September. Oregon is not the highest volume pumpkin state (that title goes to Illinois) but our wet springtime, dry, warm summers, and fertile soils help us in our organic farming methods. This is what makes Oregon #1 in organic pumpkin production!

Since we don’t have the arsenal of chemical weapons that conventional farmers use (which is just fine with us) we must be extremely diligent and thoughtful in our approach to weed and fungus control. For instance, the optic system on our GPS guided tractors can tell a pumpkin plant from a weed and this helps us to weed mechanically so we don’t need herbicides like conventional growers do. And for fertilizer? Lots of compost.

You see, pumpkins are members of the Cucurbitaceae family and this family of plants has a powerful ability to draw substances from the soil. They are such “vacuums,” in fact, that plants like cucumbers and squashes can pull dangerous pesticides from the soil that have been illegal for decades…nasty stuff like DDT. These substances then become concentrated in the fruit of the plant. So we always test the soil for these substances first and then we farm with nature to grow sweet, ripe, organic Pure Pumpkin for people around the country (and now, even around the world!) to bring into their homes. Thanks for all the extra effort, Organic Farmers!