pumpkins

How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds!

Written by UConn Dietetics Student Hannah Waxler

The Fall season brings to us a favorite squash!! Pumpkin! Did you know it’s a squash? Pumpkin and the spices that seem to flavor it best are added to just about everything: pumpkin coffee, pumpkin muffins, and of course, pumpkin pie! As delicious as pumpkin treats are, did you know that the seeds of a pumpkin can also be roasted and enjoyed?

Pumpkin seeds are an excellent source of many nutrients, including fiber, protein, magnesium, and potassium1. Pumpkin seeds can be seasoned in many ways and are delightfully crunchy when roasted, which makes them a great addition to salads, trail mixes and for a simple snack-in-a-handful!

Check out this simple way to make your own roasted pumpkin seeds:

  1. Get a pumpkin!
  2. Fill a large bowl with warm water
  3. Preheat oven to 275 degrees
  4. Wash your hands!
  5. Carefully, use a sharp knife to cut around the top of the pumpkin around the stem, and then pull on the stem to take off.
  6. Using a large spoon or your hands, pull all of the seeds out of the pumpkin and place the clumps of seeds directly into the bowl of water. This will get messy, but it’s fun! The stringy orange pulp in the pumpkin can be discarded when pulled out with the seeds.
  7. Use your hands to separate any remaining pumpkin pulp from the seeds in the bowl of water. The pulp will sink, and the seeds will float once in the water.
  8. Strain seeds out of the water with a colander, and pat the seeds dry with a paper towel.
  9. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  10. Place cleaned and dried pumpkin seeds in a bowl. Now it is time to season them! This is the fun part!
  • For a sweet, pumpkin pie flavor, use equal parts cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.
  • For a savory flavor option, use equal parts salt, pepper, garlic, and cumin.
  • Use your own spice mixture as well!
  • Once seasonings sprinkled on, use your hands to mix seeds well.
  1. Lay seasoned pumpkin seeds out in a single layer on the baking sheet.
  2. Bake the seasoned pumpkin seeds for 30-35 minutes at 275 degrees. Every 15 minutes, carefully open the oven and using a spoon or pancake flipper, stir the seeds around so they are able to roast evenly.
  3. Once the seeds are lightly browned, remove from the oven and allow to cool on pan.
  4. Store the roasted pumpkin seeds in a sealed container at room temperature.

seeds coming out of carved pumpkin with kid looking on in background hand holding seeds in front of a pumpkin holding pumpkin seeds over bowl

There are many ways you can enjoy your toasted pumpkin seeds! A few ideas:

  • Sprinkle on top of a green salad
  • Add them into a trail mix or granola
  • Sprinkle on top of yogurt
  • Enjoy these crunchy treats on their own

Happy roasting!

pumpkin seeds on tray ready for roasting roasted pumkin seeds ready to eat

Citation:

  1. USDA https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/784459/nutrients. Accessed October 10, 2020.

This material was funded by USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

Pumpkin Season

Not only is it pumpkin flavor season….it’s real pumpkin season

By:     Diane Wright Hirsch, MPH, RD

            Senior Extension Educator/Food

 

pumpkins-Pettinelli-768x1024Pumpkin flavored lattes, candy, breads, donuts…just about everything seems to be available in the pumpkin variety at this time of year. But what if you are craving the real thing? Yes, the flavor of real pumpkin is a fall treat you should not miss.

Pumpkins are thought to have originated in North America. Early colonists learned of pumpkins from Native Americans for whom pumpkin was a dietary staple. They would often cut strips of pumpkin and roast them on an open fire before eating. Seeds were saved for future crops. Nothing was wasted. Colonists adopted the pumpkin and used it to make stews, soups and desserts. Some say that pumpkin pie originated as colonists sliced off the top of the pumpkin, removed the seeds, filled it with milk and spices and roasted it in a fire. Yum. You too can learn to make the most of this member of the winter squash family. If you grow pumpkins in your garden, you are one step ahead. If not, pick up several at you local farm stand: but, why not try getting some seeds and growing your own crop next year?

If you purchase your pumpkins, you might want to start thinking about stocking up for Thanksgiving pies and winter soups, stews or baking. Apparently there is a pumpkin shortage in the Midwest where much of the canned pie pumpkin is grown by the Libby’s company. Unlike the Northeast, where a dry summer has impacted the pumpkin crop, in Illinois, the country’s largest supplier of pumpkins for canning, it is the wet weather that has been the problem. So, whether you purchase your pumpkin in a can or make your pies from scratch, it might make sense to plan ahead and stock up early.

What about Halloween?

Again, to be safe, buy early! Large pumpkins are best for carving. They are easy to carve, they don’t make the best eating, and they have many large seeds for roasting.

Roast the seeds

When carving the pumpkin, be sure to save every seed you can salvage. Put them into a large colander as you carve away. The shells are edible—adding all kinds of healthy fiber to you diet. Actually, any seeds from winter squash-acorn or butternut-can be roasted as well.

To roast the seeds, simply clean them off, dry with paper towels, spray or stir in a little vegetable or olive oil, salt lightly and roast on a cookie sheet lined with foil for about 45 minutes (or until golden brown) at 250°F. You can also try using soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder or other seasonings you like.

If you want to eat the pumpkin

Actually, pumpkins that are carved for display should NOT be eaten. Because pumpkin is a low acid vegetable, it very easily supports the growth of bacteria at room temperature or outside on a warm fall day. Even though you then cook the pumpkin, there is a risk for food-borne illness.

So, use your smaller pumpkins for meal making. These pumpkins are sweeter with finer flesh. Though often called “pie pumpkins,” pumpkins are too good to reserve for a piece of pie at the end of Thanksgiving dinner. They make great ingredients in savory soups, stews, pumpkin ravioli and gnocchi, risotto, quick breads, pancakes, or try pumpkin stuffed with rice, sausage and dried fruit.

If you want to preserve “pie pumpkin” or other edible pumpkins for later use, you have several options: freezing, canning or cold storage.

Freezing

Select full-colored mature edible (not jack-o-lantern type) pumpkins. Wash, cut into cooking-size sections and remove seeds. Cook until soft in boiling water, in steam, in a pressure cooker or in an oven. Remove pulp from rind and mash. To cool, place pan containing pumpkin in cold water and stir occasionally. Package in a container or bag that is moisture-vapor proof and made for use in the freezer. Leave a ½-inch headspace. You can keep pumpkin in the freezer at 0 degrees F for up to a year for good quality. Always defrost in the refrigerator.

Cold storage

Pumpkins can be stored at the end of the growing season for use for several months. For best results, store good quality (no mold, soft spots, cuts that are not closed), well-cured pumpkins at 50 to 55°F in a 50 to 70% relative humidity. A cool corner of a basement, a garage or in the bulkhead door area of a basement are ideal locations. Just be sure to pest-proof the area to keep them safe from rodents. Pumpkins with stems store the best.

Canning

According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, canning pumpkin butter or mashed or pureed pumpkin (or squash) is NOT recommended. In 1989 when the USDA published its “Complete Guide to Home Canning”, the only directions for canning pumpkin and winter squash was for cubed flesh. In fact, the directions for preparing the product include the statement, “Caution: Do not mash or puree.” This is likely because it is difficult to standardize the consistency of pumpkin puree in the home kitchen, resulting in a product that may be too dense to safely can at home, despite using a pressure canner.

You may, however, can cubed pumpkin in a pressure canner. A pressure canner is essential as pumpkin is a low acid food that could support the growth of botulism if not canned using USDA Extension approved methods.

For more information on growing pumpkins in the home garden, contact theUConn Home and Garden Education Center at ladybug@uconn.edu or 1-877-486-6271. For more information on preservation of pumpkin visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation at www.uga.edu/nchfp.

Fall Scenes

UConn Extension’s Jude Boucher, who specializes in Integrated Pest Management in Vegetable Crops took these pictures. The pumpkins are a Hijinks variety that are a past winner in the All-America Seed Trials. The tomatoes are packaged and ready for sale at Bishop’s Orchards in Guilford.

Sakata Seed America Bishop tomatoes

We also had a chance to enjoy some fall foliage around Tolland County. It was a spectacular year for leaves.

foliage7 foliage5

foliage3 foliage

 

Effects of Fungicide Timing and Tillage on Resistant Pumpkins

By Jude Boucher, UConn Extension Educator, Commercial Vegetable Crops

Introduction (Current Fungicide Program)

Before I can talk about this experiment, I need to remind you of how and why we use specific fungicides on pumpkins.  I’ve talked about fungicide sprays on pumpkins before and mentioned how there are four annual diseases that we can protect our pumpkins from with these products: powdery mildew (PM), Plectosporium blight (Plecto), black rot (BR) and Downy Mildew (DM).  We tend to design a fungicide spray schedule around PM, which is the most common disease on cucurbit crops and often the first to show up.  The basic idea is to slow disease spread with the fungicides by limiting spore formation, new leaf infections, and stem and fruit problems, so that you maximize your yields and net profits.

tillage

Conventional tillage and rye-mulch strips for DZT

Systemic fungicides, which move through the plant, usually provide the most effective control of PM because it is impossible for any sprayer to provide good coverage, where the infection first occurs, on the underside of the lower, older leaves in a waist-high pumpkin patch.  As part of our resistance management strategy we use each systemic family only one time each season.  That’s because, unlike with protectant fungicides, that have several modes-of-action to stop infection, systemics tend to have a single mode-of-action which is easily skirted by the billions of spores that are encountered after each spray.  To help slow resistance, and to provide control of Plecto and BR, we also add a protectant to the tank mix during each application.  So our spray program in recent years has gone something like this: Quintec + Bravo (i.e. chlorothalonil), Procure + Bravo, Pristine + Bravo, and then we switch to two protectants for the remainder of the sprays (sulfur + Bravo).  You could also use the Pristine in your second application and mix it with the protectant sulfur, to rest the Bravo, while still providing good protection against PM, Plecto and BR.  An additional product that works on water molds may be added to the spray mix late in the season if or when DM shows up, but we will talk about applications for water molds another time.

DZT

Planting pumpkins in conventional and DZT plots.

To determine when to make the first application, scout 50 lower leaves each week after the plants run, and spray when you find the first small, round, colony of white powdery mildew spores (usually on the underside of the leaf).  Then, we usually continue to make applications at 10-day intervals until mid-September.

Spray Interval and Tillage Experiment

Now that you remember the fungicide program, here is the “spray interval” experiment that we ran at the UConn Plant Science Research Farm during the last two summers.  Our starting hypothesis was that with a resistant pumpkin variety, you should be able to stretch your spray interval and still produce marketable pumpkins.

pumpkin

Pumpkin with damaged (unmarketable) handle.

We used a split-plot design with 2 tillage methods (Fig. 1) and 4 spray intervals, and replicated the 15’ X 40’ plots 4 times each, for a total of 32 plots in each experiment.  We planted 3 rows of pumpkins per plot that were spaced 5 feet between rows (Fig. 2) and 2 feet between plants in the row.  Half the pumpkins were planted on conventionally-tilled strips prepared with a plow, harrow and cultipacker, while the other half were planted on a narrow (8”), deep zone tilled seedbed through a killed rye cover crop.  The spray interval treatments consisted of no spray, 21 days, 14 days and 10 days.

In 2011, we conducted two similar but separate experiments with different PM-resistant pumpkin varieties:  ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Magic Lantern’.   In 2012, we ran a single experiment with Gladiator.   Pumpkins were planted on June 6, 2011 and June 8, 2012 and harvested September 12 and 16 the first year, and September 7 the second year.

unsprayed

Unsprayed pumpkin plot with powdery mildew damage.

The first spray for PM was applied on August 12, 2011 and on July 27, 2012.  The same sequence of fungicides mentioned above were used in each treatment, except that we used the chlorothalonil brand Initiate instead of Bravo.   We did not complete the sequence of 3 systemics + protectant applications before harvest for the 21d treatment either year (only two applications were made to these plots).   In 2011, total rainfall for the year exceeded 63 inches in Storrs, with the remnants of Hurricanes Irene and Lee adding to the extreme wetness in late August and early September, while 2012 had “normal” rainfall for the season and year (42.4 inches for the year).

Powdery mildew damage to leaves (Fig. 3), Plecto damage to vines (Fig. 4), and fruit stem or handle (Fig. 5) damage were rated on a scale of 0-5 or 0-3 for no damage to severe damage (i.e. leaf death or no handle).   The fruit were weighed at harvest and the percent marketable fruit were calculated.  A marketable fruit was considered to be at least 3 pounds and have a stem rating of 2 or less (medium to no damage).

2012 (“Normal”-Rainfall-Season Results)

There was not much difference between pumpkins grown with the two tillage methods for any of the factors measured in 2012.  However, there were big differences between the different spray intervals.  The 10d (average leaf rating of 2) interval provided better PM control than the 14d or the 21d (rating of 3), which did better than no spray (rating of 4.3).   Both the 10d and the 14d spray interval provided better vine protection from Plecto than the 21d interval or no spray.   Again, both the 10d and 14d spray interval provided better stems (handles) than the 21d interval, which was better than the treatment that did not get sprayed, where most handles were not marketable.  Average fruit weight ran about 13 pounds for the 10d and 14d interval plots and about 11 pounds for the 21d and no spray treatments.   Almost all (95-100%) of the fruit were marketable for the 10d and 14d spray intervals, while 75-90% were marketable for the 21d interval (90% in the DZT plots), and only 40-50% were marketable for the unsprayed plots.  We could conclude that in a year with normal rainfall, even with a resistant variety like Gladiator, we shouldn’t stretch the spray interval to more than 14 days.  Since both the 10d and 14d treatments received 4 applications in 2012, there was no reduction in fungicide use when increasing the interval by 4 days.  However, since pumpkins generally yield about 20 tons per acre, at a retail price of $0.50/pound in CT, you would make $19,000-$20,000 gross profits (roughly $6,500 wholesale at $0.17/lb.) by using fungicides on a 10d or 14d interval, compared with half that amount or less if you didn’t use fungicides.

2011 (Wet-Season Results)

I’ll shorten the 2011 story by just talking about the percent marketable fruit results, because in the end, that is what will determine how much money you will make from your pumpkin patch.  With all the rain in August and September of 2011, improving drainage with deep zone tillage (DZT), and possibly having a rye mulch for the fruit to grow on, made a big difference compared with growing pumpkins on bare ground with conventional tillage.

vines

Plectosporium damage to vines.

Between 80-95% of the Gladiator fruit were marketable in the sprayed DZT plots, but only 65-70% were marketable in the sprayed conventionally-tilled plots, while only 50-55% of the fruit were marketable in the unsprayed plots for either tillage method.  This is an increase in yields of 15-25% in sprayed DZT versus conventionally-tilled plots.  That means that increased yields from as little as 2 acres of retail pumpkins could pay for a new zone builder.  A 2008 compaction survey showed that this research farm field was one of the few vegetable fields in the state without a plow pan.  Imagine how much better yields might be if you were using DZT on a field with a plow pan (89% of CT vegetable fields) and poor drainage.

Ironically, with more wet weather in 2011, there was not a big difference in marketable fruit between the different spray intervals for Gladiator, as long as they were sprayed (15-40% decrease in yield when left unsprayed).

The wet 2011 season reduced yields for Magic Lantern much more than for Gladiator.  For the conventionally-tilled, 14d and 21d spray interval plots, Magic Lantern only yielded 25-35% marketable fruit, compared with 45-70% for DZT plots with the same spray intervals (a yield difference of 20-35%).  For Magic Lantern, both tillage methods yielded 60-65% marketable fruit for the 10d interval, but only 5-15% for the unsprayed plots.   Spray intervals made very little difference for DZT plots, but a tight schedule (10d) made a big difference for the conventionally-tilled plots.  However, the highest gross profit you would have made with this variety, even with DZT, was $14,000 per acre, compared with $19,000 for Gladiator.

Our final conclusions would be that Gladiator performs better than Magic Lantern in a wet year, it pays to DZT in a wet year, it pays to use fungicides any year, and you probably want to stick with a 10 or 14-day spray schedule even with resistant varieties.