Tags: Certified Organic Open Pollinated

Growing Practices: No Pesticides No Herbicides No Fungicides No Synthetic Fertilizers

Latin Name: Cucurbita pepo

Days to Maturity: 105 days

Description:

New Release - Ongoing Development by Edmund Frost for Common Wealth Seed Growers.
An Orange Halloween pumpkin bred to resist downy mildew - so that they grow well into October. They also have good vine borer resistance, an uncommon trait for Cucurbita pepo varieties.
Average size is 11 inches in diameter. For Virginia and similar climates we recommend planting in mid to late June for harvest in mid to late October. Some percentage of plants (10% in 2023) will make pumpkins with skin that is too hard to carve. This is a trait Edmund has been selecting against (though in the future he may release a separate variety with the hard shell). Shapes vary from round to somewhat oblong, and they ripen to a deep orange color. They trended towards more oblong in 2022.
Resilient Fire Pumpkin comes from a cross between Magic Lantern, an orange carving pumpkin resistant to powdery mildew (which may also confer some downy mildew resistance); and an orange squash from Tamaulipas, Mexico called Tutume. Edmund got Tutume (PI 532389) and about a dozen other tropical Cucurbita pepo seedstocks from the USDA germplasm bank for a late-planted downy mildew trial in 2018. Tutume was the only squash that handled the downy mildew and produced well in the trial.
Its possible this variety has higher than average susceptibility to squash bugs - it has always done well at Twin Oaks Seed Farm in late plantings but struggled with squash bugs one of the times we planted them early. Consider using row cover on young plants if you have high squash bug pressure.
We'd love your feedback on this ongoing project!
204 seeds / ounce. Grown by Twin Oaks Seed Farm.

These seeds and their offspring are open-source, and not available for private intellectual property ownership. Pass on these words when you pass on the seeds!

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Story of this Seed:

Thank you to all the people who created the parent varieties, especially those in and around Llera de Canales, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Also to Ted Superak of Harris Moran Seeds who developed Magic Lantern pumpkin, and Henry Munger of Cornell who bred its powdery mildew resistant parent from an interspecific C. pepo and C. moschata cross. Thank you to Kathy Reitsma and other curators of the Cucurbita pepo seed bank at North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, Iowa. Also M. Nee and T.C. Andres.