THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 17, 1996 TAG: 9610170337
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By WENDY GROSSMAN
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 68 lines
Jack-o'-lanterns might be a bit soggy this Halloween, since several Virginia pumpkin patches are rotten.
``The wet weather did in the pumpkin crop this year,'' said Herman Hunt, vegetable specialist at Virginia Tech. ``After the hurricanes passed through, extensive thunderstorms kept the fields wet, drowning leaves, vines and collapsing some fields.''
July's near-monsoon kept farmers from spraying their crops with pesticides, caused root rot and wilted vines, making a fungus grow, Hunt said.
``The crop is very light in the eastern part of the state,'' Hunt said.
Stewart Taylor of Toano, 10 miles north of Williamsburg, has grown and sold pumpkins to Norfolk residents for 35 years. His 30-acre Fairview Farm didn't harvest the usual 20,000 this year.
``Two-thirds of them is rotted,'' Taylor said. ``You pick up nine or 10 to get one good one - and the bottom falls out of it. You always have some rotten ones - but it's never been this bad.''
Last year wasn't a perfect growing season either - it was too dry.
Despite this year's gooshy gourds, the price remains around 25 cents a pound, the state Department of Agriculture said.
``I won't make nothing on them this season,'' Taylor said. ``You salvage a little bit, but not enough to make a profit. You'd call it almost a complete failure. Almost.''
But a few miles down Route 60 in Norge, The Meadows Pumpkin Patch has more customers than ever.
``We had a boomer of a year,'' said Melinda Kish , whose dad has grown pumpkins for 30 years. ``We had a crop of Mammoth Gold, and this particular seed was not affected by all of the rain we had this summer - it's a more hardy brand.''
They lost about three of 18 acres worth of the orange globes to deer, though.
Locally, it was hard to get pumpkins this year, said Ellen Vecchietti, manager of Ghent Gardens on Granby Street. She called pumpkin farms in Suffolk and Smithfield, but had to order 200 pumpkins from the other side of Williamsburg this fall.
``Most of the pumpkins in Smithfield and Suffolk rotted on the vine,'' she said.
But some pumpkin patches in Hampton Roads did just fine, said William Powell of Powell's Pick Your Own Pumpkins in Chesapeake.
Olivia Wells, a pumpkin farmer in Ivor, harvested about as many as she did last last year, a fair crop, she said. Still, that June hailstorm kicking off a wet summer didn't help.
``The first crop rotted off, but the second crop came on and did rather good,'' she said. ``A few of them got drowned out - but not that many.''
But Hurricane Bertha devastated Whitfield Davis's 14 acres in West Point. He diced up all his pumpkins and plowed them under.
He tried draining the water-soaked field. He sprayed to prevent mildew and rot. But when he went to pick them ,they were filled with worm holes. If he couldn't sell a good pumpkin, he didn't want to sell any.
In more than 25 years, he's never lost the whole crop, his wife, Helen, said.
Wednesday, he dropped wheat seeds in his pumpkin beds. ILLUSTRATION: [Color] Photo illustration by Bob Voros and Vicki
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