BY RON MACEDO

Special to AgAlert

We have a 20-acre corn maze, 75 different varieties of pumpkins, and we’ve been harvesting pumpkins for about a month. We’re starting to get into the traditional carvers, the orange harvest.

It’s been extremely challenging this year with the hot weather, trying to hold vines and moisture and keeping pumpkins from getting sunburned. It’s been a heavy mite year with a lot of extra watering, but all in all, the quality looks good. Fortunately, we’re in a very good water district, and we have excellent groundwater here, so zero water challenges.

The corn maze and the pumpkin stand have been slow due to hot weather, but we’re making the most of it and hoping for cooler weather and better crowds.

We plant pumpkins the entire month of June. We grow all the pumpkins on black plastic mulch and drip, and this year was so hot in June when we were planting. We encountered some high-heat bacteria that were causing the plants to wilt and die. We had to take steps and measures to treat those, to get them to survive. It was very, very challenging. I’d seen it one other time about 10 years ago, but I wasn’t sure what it was then.

This year when it happened again, I was looking for similarities, and I noticed that it was the 104- to 107-degree weather for an extended period. I had some plants cultured, and we found three different bacteria actively colonizing the plants. The treatment is very expensive. We transplant a lot of these higher-end varietals ourselves. They’re expensive, and to put them out there and the next day they’re dead, it’s discouraging.

I think people should celebrate Halloween. It’s the best day of the year. That means celebrate and decorate and buy and carve as many pumpkins as they can.

— Courtesy of the California Farm Bureau.