THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 27, 1994 TAG: 9410270442
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JODY R. SNIDER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
At best, some Hampton Roads pumpkin growers are reporting half a crop this year. At worst, many pumpkin patches are standing empty. And some fields have already been plowed under by growers.
But it wasn't the full moon that bewitched this Halloween crop.
Growers are blaming a strange growing season and even stranger weather patterns that began last summer during the planting of Virginia's 1,136 pumpkin acres.
``It's been one of the shortest growing seasons in four or five years,'' says Bob Goerger, an Isle of Wight County Extension Service agent.
In June, when growers were planting and needed rain, fields were bone-dry across Hampton Roads and Virginia.
Then in July, it was the other extreme: 14.37 inches of rain fell, breaking a 19-year record of 13.73 inches in Hampton Roads, according to the National Weather Service.
In August, another wet spell hit the area.
``It was extremely dry last June when we were planting our pumpkins,'' Isle of Wight County pumpkin grower Olivia Wells said recently. ``The seed sat in dry dirt for three to four weeks. Then the rains came.
``Some of them came up and some didn't. We replanted, but there wasn't enough time for those seeds to grow.''
The 2-acre pumpkin plot she grows with her husband, Ashton, usually produces several thousand pumpkins weighing from 50 to 60 pounds each, she said.
This year, the crop was only 900 pumpkins, and they were about the size of basketballs.
At retail stores like Farmer's Service Co. in Smithfield, Manager Mike Hundley said he tried to buy locally before contacting Dan Schantz Farms and Greenhouses in Quakertown, Pa., for 300 pumpkins.
``I went to a local grower here, and I was told he couldn't supply me. Since people now want to decorate the entire month of October to give it that fall look, I went with someone else.''
In fact, many of the pumpkins coming into Virginia are coming from Pennsylvania farms like Schantz's.
Schantz Sales Manager Denny Heilman said 250 acres of Pennsylvania pumpkins, ranging from 3 inches in diameter to 400 pounds apiece, are shipped as far south as Florida and as far north as Boston each year.
This year, in addition to the 14 loads of Pennsylvania pumpkins that come into Virginia each year, Heilman said he is shipping an 250,000 pounds more - or about six additional truckloads - into Virginia to make up for the pumpkin shortage. Heilman said about 10 percent of the farm's total pumpkin crop is headed to the Old Dominion.
``There's just no pumpkins in that area,'' he said earlier this week. ``First it was dry, then it was wet - and it stayed wet. And pumpkins like to have dry feet.''
If they get too much rain, extension agent Goerger said, that sets up ``the opportunity for disease and foliage decline, causing the pumpkins not to produce.''
In New Kent County, where 200 acres of pumpkins valued at $550,000 are grown each year, extension agent Paul Davis said growers suffered a 50 percent loss.
``It was a great season for selling, but it was a poor year for raising pumpkins,'' he said. ``Pumpkins have deep roots that need a lot of air space in the soil. This year, however, because of all the rain, that space was taken up with water, and the roots drowned.''
Henley Farms in Virginia Beach also reported its harvest was down by 50 percent, owner Barbara Henley said.
But even stranger, the vines continued to grow into October at Henley Farms.
``They're growing even now,'' she said. ``And that's highly unusual because the crop doesn't normally continue to grow into October. I'm not really sure what's happened to the season.''
Over at Princess Anne Produce in Virginia Beach, which has a 3-acre patch, Pennsylvania pumpkins are on order, sales clerk Debbie Kyes said.
``This year,'' she said, ``the pumpkin fairy delivers them, we grow some of our own and the rest come from Pennsylvania.''
Princess Anne Produce owner John Vogel said he had to order more pumpkins than he would like this year.
``It's the old weather situation,'' Vogel said. ``It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't what we were used to getting in the fields. This just isn't great pumpkin country.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photos by CHARLIE MEADS
JOHN VOGEL, Owner, Princess Anne Produce
Little Creek Elementary student Derek Nees struggles to carry a
pumpkin he picked out at Princess Anne Produce.
by CNB