Area farmer ready for pumpkin season

By GINA KINSLOW

GLASGOW — Visit Tim Britt’s farm in southern Barren County and you’ll be greeted by a Border Collie carrying a deflated basketball in his mouth. The Border Collie is known as Nixon, The Pumpkin Dog.

Nixon will place his basketball at your feet and watch the ball closely, waiting to see if you will give it a kick while talking to Britt about pumpkins.

Britt raised 15 acres of fruit this season.

“They did pretty good this year,” he said, estimating he had roughly 1,000 pumpkins per acre.

Britt sells his pumpkins wholesale and retail. He plants a small crop in May so he will have some available around Labor Day for his wholesale customers.

“The rest of them we will plant sometime in June. Hopefully, if the weather cooperates, we will start harvesting around Sept. 15.”

The secret to a good crop is making sure the vines are sprayed for disease.

“You’ve got to have a religious spray regime in order to grow pumpkins in Kentucky,” he said. “They are disease ridden.”

Some of the diseases that affect pumpkins are: Powdery Mildew, Downy Mildew, Gummy Stem Blight and Blotch.

“You name it, they (can) get it,” he said. “They also get viruses.”

Too much rain promotes disease, and the “heavier the pumpkin crop on the vine the more diseases you’ve got.”

“The first of September my vines were hurting,” he said. “They were diseased up pretty good. I was afraid they weren’t going to make anything. I kept on spraying them and they finally straightened out and when the vines died down I saw I had a better crop than what I thought I had.”

Britt raises several different types of pumpkins.

“I’ve got five different speciality pumpkins and then I grow about four or five jack-o-lantern varieties,” he said.

The varieties requested by most people who want to make a pumpkin pie from scratch, he said, are the Old Fashion and Fairytale pumpkins.

A Fairytale pumpkin will grow as large as 30 pounds, while an Old Fashion will weigh 70 to 72 pounds.

Local people often refer to the Old Fashion variety as the “old time cow pumpkin” or the “old time hog pumpkin.”

“They are the ones they used to plant in the cornfields,” Britt said.

One variety that is fairly new is the Cinderella, which tends to be red, short and squatty so that one can be staked atop another and used in fall arrangements.

Another variety is large, bright red with a rough, bumpy texture and is known as a Red Warty Thing.

Of the varieties commonly used to make jack-o-lanterns, he said he tries to grow the ones that are large.

The largest pumpkin he ever grew was one that weighed 265 pounds. He entered it in the Largest Pumpkin Contest at the annual Pumpkin Festival in Edmonton, and he won, sort of.

“They had declared me the winner but then a man came around the square with a 400-pound pumpkin in his truck,” he said. “I said, ‘Give him the prize.’ I thought he deserved it.”

Britt has no idea how to grow a pumpkin that large. After growing the 265-pound pumpkin, he began trying to raise World Class Giant Pumpkins.

“After that they kept getting smaller, so I quit before they got down to 25 pounds,” he said.

Britt also raises squash. This year he had a cross between a pumpkin and a Cushaw. It is large and round like a pumpkin, but has green striped skin like a Cushaw.

Britt also raises mums, but at one time he raised burley tobacco.

“Back when I was growing tobacco you got a big check and you could fill up a big hole at the bank,” he said. “With pumpkins you don’t get a big check, but if you keep saving them you’ll end up with a pretty good pile if you have a good year.”

With the exception of the labor it takes to harvest a burley tobacco crop, Britt said tobacco can be grown cheaper than pumpkins.

“Before I ever pick a pumpkin I’ve got $500 per acre in it,” he said. “So, if you have a small crop you don’t make much. Sometimes if you make your spray bill back you’ve done good.

“Some years you will do real good. It’s like anything else you do in farming. It’s a gamble.”

For additional information about Tim Britts Farm is available by calling (270) 261-1533.