Pumpkin Growers Trying to Bounce Back From The Drought
By: Brittany Escobar
Updated: September 26, 2012
Tim Assiter said the more than seven inches of rain they've had this year has growers in Pumpkin Capital USA still trying to recover from the drought.
"It's such a high intensity high labor crop and it depends so much on the weather and the issues around it," said Assiter.
"It is not as bad as 2011," he said "but it has been a very, very difficult year."
Assiter owns Assiter Punkin Ranch and he says his pumpkins were able to survive this year because of how closely they monitored their 72 variety crops.
"I think its still short of what we would call normal, however you see the pumpkins that we do have are way above average."
He said he's had to pretty much baby the pumpkins because its such an expensive product.
For a 200 lb pumpkin, the seeds cost $330 per thousand seeds.
"We have got a very good quality crop and we are getting it out there," he said.
Out there to even those out of state who say they want pumpkins.
"We've never been out here to get pumpkins," said Susan Graybill and Jane Bowen, "I went to Cordell, Oklahoma to a pumpkin festival and they didn't have any last year, so we decided to go where the pumpkins were this year."
The two sisters are from Oklahoma and say after reading an article about Pumpkin Capital USA, they decided to make a day trip from Hammon, Oklanhoma, to Assiter Punkin Ranch in Floydada.
"Last year everything was terrible we had very little rain and we had multiple days of over 100 degrees, pumpkins do not pollinate at that level so you do not see as many pumpkins in the field," said Assiter, "This year we had a lot of days over 100 but not near as many as we had last. This years crop is going to be a lot better than what it was last years."
Now even though Assister says the pumpkins look much better than last year, he says as a farmer, for cotton that's not the case.
"We may have let our cotton suffer a little bit to make the pumpkins right," he said, "it's been very, very dry and very, very hot and that's not good on pumpkins."
