Harvesting the first of my pumpkins last month was a bit mystifying because I thought I’d planted Jack O-lantern pumpkins. I know what you’re thinking, surprise at what emerges from my plot is nothing new (remember the carrot shaped beetroots?). But these pumpkin seeds were from one of those seed packets aimed at encouraging children to grow veg and had a bright orange halloween pumpkin, complete with smiley cartoon face, on the front. I assumed it must have been my muddle up when they kept appearing with gorgeous green stripes. 
I now think I may have been a little hasty with transferring the pumpkins to the fridge for storing. The pumpkins that have been stock piling on a chair at the plot have started to blush orange so today I emptied the fridge and now they are all basking in the autumn sunshine in the back yard.
Unlike the marrow plants at the plot the pumpkins are still producing flowers. I snipped off lots of the large chalky leaves and if the bees don’t find it too cold now that autumn is officially here we may still get a few more pumpkins cropping up.
I haven’t done anything spectacular with my pumpkins yet. Perhaps the inside of the pumpkin will change colour too; at the moment it’s just like marrow and is simply being grated into tomato based dishes, curries and soups.
Those are beautiful!
We had one solitary pumpkin last year and it looked the same as yours.It changed to a lovely orange colour and the inside flesh did also. I made my first ever pumkin pie and then cut a face in the shell for the kids for halloween!
I’m glad to hear the flesh changed inside as well – I’m a bit tired of marrow like dishes. I saw an ace book yesterday for creative things to do with pumpkin shells, thought I might make a bird feeder with one of mine
Your pumpkins WILL turn colour! I usually leave them on the vine until just before the first frost. They start off green, even dark green then they ripen. Don’t worry!
phew, glad to hear that – i think they heard my wonderings and have been blushing beautifully this week. When you leave them on the vine don’t you find they just get bigger and bigger. I had some whoppers so started cutting the rest off before they got too big.
Hi Nic ! Your pumps look a lot like mine. 🙂
I thoroughly enjoyed growing them !
I cut mine early because frost did the vines in and I had to clear the beds for planting anyway, but most already had hints of orange.
This year’s weather delayed a lot of the crops, but I will be giving my pumpkins a head start next year and looking for a few early varieties as well. I’m following Matron’s advice in selecting crops suited to short seasons. 😉
me too Miss M – so many pumpkins from such little effort :o)
crops for short seasons, now there’s an idea (although I have lots of space so perhaps I should go for crops with long seasons!)