Bring on Halloween: N.S. farmers say it’s been a great season for pumpkins

Pumpkin farmers rave about weather While some crops have struggled, the hot, humid weather is great for other crops. Natasha Pace reports.

With Thanksgiving and Halloween just around the corner, some pumpkin farmers in Atlantic Canada are reaping the benefits of ideal growing conditions.

Dill Family Farm in Windsor, N.S., about 70 kilometres northwest of Halifax, is expecting their best year in recent memory, in part due to the hot, humid weather they’ve been experiencing during the peak growing months.

"I think the nights were so warm (and) that just goes hand-in-hand with anything to grow,” Danny Dill, who runs the farm, told CTV Atlantic. “The dew in the morning on the foliage, I think helped with some moisture.”

Dill is expecting to sell 10,000 pumpkins this fall, a sizeable increase from 2017. He says heavy rain during the growing season last year prevented pumpkin flowers from being pollinated and thus stunted their growth.

This year, however, pumpkins aren’t the only ones thriving. For the first time at Dill Family Farm, some watermelons have grown to weigh more than 45 kilograms.

The great growing season comes as a welcome sight to farmer’s markets in the area, who’ve found it hard to get produce on their shelves following a cold spring.

"We've had a lot of orchards where trees have not produced, so a lot of the other items that come our way -- particularly in the fall -- it's a bonus,” said David Landzaat, owner of Windsor’s Appleseed Country Market.

Dill says while commercial pumpkin sales are expected to be a success this year, frost this past spring has delayed the growth of giant pumpkins by about a month.

Each Thanksgiving weekend, Dill hosts a pumpkin weigh-off and regatta, where competitors carve out giant pumpkins and use them as a boat to race across a local lake.

With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Natasha Pace