Dry summer causes paltry pumpkin harvest

There’s trouble brewing in the pumpkin patch.\nScorching weather and lack of rain this summer wiped out some pumpkin crops from western New York to Illinois, leaving fields dotted with undersized fruit. Other fields got too much rain and their crops rotted.\nPumpkin production is predicted to be down for the second straight year. U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show a slight production decrease from 2005 to 2006 in what the department estimates is a $100 million-a-year industry.\n“If you’ve got to have them for your 5-year-olds, I certainly would not wait a long time to get them,” said Steve Bogash, a Penn State University horticulture educator who works with about 1,600 Pennsylvania vegetable growers.\nPennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 producer, harvested what Bogash calls a beautiful early crop. But he said the state’s midseason pumpkins were a bust, and the fate of late-season pumpkins depends on decent weather holding on well into October.\nA lack of rain in July and August seems to have hurt the most.\nHot, dry weather causes pumpkins to produce too many male blossoms and too few female ones. Farmers also can blame drought for scads of small pumpkins as well as lighter weights because of a lack of water.