We ate our last Seminole pumpkin from the previous year’s harvest a couple of months ago. It was a sad day, but I was also really encouraged after experiencing the abundance and long-term storage abilities of Seminole pumpkin. This year, I set out to grow even more pumpkins.

Last year’s harvest provided hundreds of seeds, so I was able to do lots of experimenting. I sprinkled seeds EVERYWHERE just to see what would happen and I was not disappointed. We ended up with six highly productive plants. By far, the most productive were the plants growing in the Hügelkultur mound we’d built over the past year while preparing the land for cultivation.

Growing the pumpkins on the mound turned out to be perfect in many ways (nature knows best). It was especially great because there was no need to try to tame the vigorous vines as they were growing (mostly) out of our way. They had full freedom to grow as wild as they wanted and it was obvious they loved that.

So far, we’ve found twenty pumpkins developing on the vines with more flowers and baby pumpkins continuing to set.

My goal is to harvest twelve pumpkins this year for our family. We’ll let the plants thrive until the frost takes them out and see what nature provides. Time will tell if we meet or exceed this goal. Stay tuned!