EVERY year, families choose the perfect pumpkin, hollow out the middle and cut a gory face into the front as part of their Halloween festivities.
But why have we incorporated this huge vegetable into of holiday celebrations and how did the strange tradition start? We’ve got all the info.
Despite being native to North America, the autumnal vegetable can be grown in your very own garden.
All they need is a sunny position, moisture-retentive soil and shelter from any chilly winds.
Unfortunately for keen gardeners, you have missed your chance to grow any this year.
It’s important to plant them in June in preparation for the autumn harvest.
As they are native to North America, you can imagine that it’s stateside that they are most commonly eaten.
Across the pond they are included in cakes, pies, breads, soups and even cheesecake.
1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins are produced in the US every year and in recent years the unconventional white pumpkin has gained in popularity.
Although it’s not just our American cousins who enjoy a bit of the orange stuff, we’ve put together a few delicious recipes for your left-overs this Halloween.
Depending on which one you go for your pumpkin should vary in size between 10-20lb.
They can, however, get significantly bigger than this, with a report in September of a 137 stone pumpkin which was 4ft tall and 18ft round.
This monstrous vegetable was blown out of the water a month later by an even bigger beast weighing in at 161st.
So how has this root vegetable become so intertwined with Halloween?
Folklore tells the story of Stingy Jack, a lazy blacksmith who invited the devil to join him for a drink but, not wanting to pay for the drink, convinced him to turn himself into a coin.
Instead of using the coin to pay for his beverage, the story goes that Jack, kept the coin in his wallet next to a cross, stripping Satan of all his powers.
He eventually set him free on the condition that he wouldn’t take Jack into Hell.
When Jack died, he wasn’t allowed into heaven due to his bad deeds on Earth and was banned from Hell because of the deal he had made.
According to the legend, the devil tossed him an ember from Hades that would never go out.
He placed this in a hollowed-out turnip and aimlessly wandered the Earth in search of a resting place.
The story travelled with the Irish over to the States and evolved till these “Jack-o-lanterns” were being made from pumpkins.
The vegetable has now become closely intertwined with supernatural fiction too, with Cinderella’s carriage made of a pumpkin, Harry Potter’s favourite drink of pumpkin juice and the “Pumpkin King” in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
We’ve designed this helpful guide, to make sure you know how to carve your pumpkin this Halloween.
