Hampshire pumpkin patch defying challenges for successful harvest
National Trust gardeners say pumpkins have been impacted by the weather this year
A Hampshire pumpkin patch has told us how it's defied several challenges to produce enough pumpkins for everyone ahead of the Halloween season.
It follows National Trust gardeners calling this year's pumpkin harvest "abysmal" - blaming poor weather and an army of slugs.
Niall Smith from Fordingbridge Pumpkin Patch told Greatest Hits Radio this year's harvest has been a challenge but they've had some good fortune.
He said: "The main challenge is when you first plant is making sure you actually have rain so that they the pumpkins can start growing and then ongoing too much rain obviously is a problem because they don't like getting too wet because they are a tropical fruit, but also they need enough water to get to a decent size.
"We've been really, really lucky in terms of the volume of pumpkins."
Mr Smith added that their biggest issue has been keeping weeds at bay, telling us his team has worked tirelessly to defeat the weeds.
"If the weeds grow quicker than the pumpkin plant can grow, then they take over," he said, continuing: "So you have patches of the fields that don't have pumpkins.
"We've worked very, very, very hard this year trying to get rid of a lot of weeds, there's still some in the field, but the pumpkins have managed to outpace them."
Luck, hope and care
He said that pumpkin growers must accept that you're not going to have a 100% success rate.
"We tend to just plant far more than we need and we accept that there some attrition, there's some wastage, but if we over plant then it means we hopefully have enough to keep everyone happy until the 31st of October," he said.
The patch in Fordingbridge has over 20 varieties of pumpkins and said there's a lot of luck involved in growing the fruit.
Niall said: "The smaller ones grow multiple fruits on a plant. The bigger ones will just grow one fruit, and every year we lose some. Some of the seeds just don't grow. We've got no idea why where this year we've got loads of loads of gourds. Last year we had none and there's no rhyme or reason to it.
"There's a lot of luck. There's a lot of hope and a lot of care.
"You need to put a lot of care into the plant when they first the seeds first go into the ground and then after that you just leave them to it and they kind of do their own job."