To get the most out of your pumpkin harvest, You only need to do three things right: store fruits in suitable conditions, send them to the table at the right moment and don’t forget about the seeds.
Keep her in the room
One of the biggest trump cards of the pumpkin – its ability to be successfully stored without any basements or refrigerators: She is completely comfortable with a temperature of about +20 0WITH. Fruits will feel most comfortable away from direct sunlight.. If the floor is covered with linoleum or laminate, put paper under the pumpkins «rugs» from newspapers, napkins or pieces of cardboard. Try to protect them from injury and do not allow children or pets to use the fruits for play..
Wait for it to ripen
The taste of pumpkin can be very disappointing, if it has not yet matured or, vice versa, overstayed. Usually, the onset of maturity can be judged by the woody stalk. There are other clues, but they depend on the type of pumpkin. There are three of them in common use: hard-barked, large-fruited and nutmeg.
Hard-bark pumpkin. Recognized by its rounded, elongated fruits, the stalk of which is faceted and looks like a very thick pencil. Many people save these pumpkins for later., not wanting to fight tough, «woody» peel. However, it is the hard-barked pumpkin varieties that should be eaten first., because the seeds inside germinate quickly, and the pulp becomes tasteless.
Large-fruited pumpkin. The title should not be misleading: this type can include fruits of any size, including portions. In most cases these are rounded, noticeably flattened, brightly colored pumpkins. The stalk looks like a thick electronic cable (in the cylinderric form). These pumpkins gain flavor after just 2–4 weeks after collection and under good conditions can be no less 8 stay juicy and sweet for months.
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butternut squash. The corresponding characteristic of this species – stalk, looks like an inverted funnel: near the fruit it is smooth and wide, but with a narrow faceted «ponytail». The fruits themselves are usually elongated, pear-shaped or similar to zucchini (but sometimes they are round) and somewhat faded coloring. To fully appreciate the taste of country-grown butternut squash, it needs to be allowed to sit for about two months after collection: the bark should be beige or brown. But don't drag out the pleasure any longer., than 2 more–3 months: after this period the pulp will begin to lose taste and smell.
Use seeds
The hard-bark pumpkin seeds are especially tasty and fleshy.. In addition, in this species they are dressed in a narrow shell, which is easy to clean, and in some varieties they are even practically naked. At the same time, it is risky to leave your seeds for sowing on a hard-bark pumpkin. – after all, zucchini and squash also belong to this species, so seeds often produce strange objects.
Seeds, extracted from large-fruited pumpkin, tastes good too, although they are more difficult to clean due to their hard shell. You can also save your seeds for sowing, but only if one variety was grown.
Here's the butternut squash – a completely unsuitable object for obtaining seeds: there aren't enough of them, they are small and very hard. You can throw seeds for sowing.
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Lilliputians and giants
In terms of size, no vegetable can compare with pumpkin.: its size ranges from a chicken egg to a car.
The smallest fruits belong to the hard-barked pumpkin. Until a certain point, little ones the size of a child's fist or the size of a tennis ball were considered inedible and were used as decorations.. But at the moment they are also available for table use.: for example, adorable orange lobed pumpkin Jack be little, white Baby Boo, looks like a toy garlic head, and dressed up Sweet Dumpling, resembling a pudding tin with stripes on a white background.
But the record-breaking giants always belong to the large-fruited pumpkin. The Guinness Book of Records contains the largest pumpkin in the world weighing 1190,49 kg (grown in Belgium in 2016 year). And the Russian pumpkin record (fruit weight 645,5 kg) many Muscovites saw with their own eyes: this year he is decorating the autumn harvest exhibition, which ran until mid-October.
Russian pumpkin record. Photo: From personal archive/ Lena Popleva
A source: aif.ru