Naked-seeded pumpkins

I did a quick search and did not see any old threads on naked-seeded pumpkins. Please let me know if I missed any previous discussion that you know of on this topic.

I've tried these in the past and did not get a good yield with our poor soil. Last year, my wife gave some extra care to the Lady Godiva type naked-seeded pumpkin hills and they produced very well for us. We just finished processing the last of the pumpkins this month. The first ones ripened in late July/early August last year, so they store very well. We only had one pumpkin go bad over the winter, and the ones processed in March only had a couple of sprouted seeds inside.

The pumpkin fruits are not very big, just ~3 lbs each. They start off green and orange striped, then get more orange the longer they are off the vine. They were great for fall decorations. Here is a pumpkin after storage.

The best part about growing these plants are the seeds. The naked-seeded types have been bred to have no shell around the seeds, so all you have to do is cut the pumpkin, scoop the seeds out and rinse off the pumpkin guts through a strainer. The cleaned up easily and dried out nicely after a couple of hours on screens in the Excalibur dryer. Finish air drying for another day if you are storing them. Each pumpkin contains about a half cup of the seeds.

Great snacks and a good nutrient profile, with quite a few minerals.

Each vine produced ~3-6 pumpkins. We'll be planting more of them this year. I need to do a better job on controlling the pollination. We grow zucchini every year (Black Beauty) which is also a Cucurbita pepo variety, so I will use masking tape on some of the flowers for each type to keep them closed until I can hand pollinate fruits for seed-saving/planting the following years. These will be great to add to the local seed library.

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Naked-seeded pumpkins