Yesterday I froze the final half of one of last seasons crown pumpkins. We planted four seedlings (grown from the previous years seed) into one of our vegie patches.
We decide to lay weed mat on the garden and peg it down last year as the year prior the grass and weeds grew up through the plants and, as well as looking unsightly, I'm sure robbed the pumpkin plants from some of the nutrients in the soil. We cut crosses in the mat to plant our seedlings into. I managed to keep the vines from spreading on to SH's lawn and from a small patch of around 2 x 2 metres square we harvested 13 large crown pumpkins - enough to give away and keep us in soups, roast pumpkin, pumpkin salad and more for the past 9 months.
I do have a couple of other favourite pumpkins including the sweet and dry buttercup - but the Crown keeps so well and actually sweetens with age. I saved seeds from one of our Crowns part way through winter. We cut open our last about 3 weeks ago, it was so big we gave half to friends and after having some roasted I have frozen the remainder before it goes mouldy in the fridge.
I part roast it in olive oil and then freeze to free-flow in bags ready to pop in a roasting dish with my frozen kumara also from last season.
So today when I bagged it up to put in the freezer here is a photo of the end of last season's pumpkin season and in my little greenhouse outside, the beginning of another.
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