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Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

I have 4 large pumpkins on 3 plants all with completely different Genetics. I have seen pictures of the parents and all have good colour. All mine are white. Will they turn more orange as they mature? Does the fertility effect colour? ie. will higher potash near the end help the colour?

9/1/2004 4:13:28 PM

Ctpumpkin@optonline.net

Maturity & sun will usually color up the fruit some. But the same condition might also cause your fruit to express some green color if it's still white now. You don't mention which seed stock you have nor how old the fruit is so this is speculative.


Nutrition has almost nothing to do with fruit color & Potash won't change the color at all.

I do recall a thread last year where it was suggested that Betta Cerotene might impart an orange color if we could figure out how to get it into the fruit. Topical applications might work. I don't know if anyone has ever tried it.

9/1/2004 9:05:42 PM

Sequim, WA

I have white pumpkins on the 717 Mitchell plant I am growing this year. Parents are 723 Bobier and 801 Stelts, so one parent has so so color and the other outstanding color. It's odd that all three of you plants are throwing white fruit, but it's probably just a coincidence. I know of nothing that can affect fruit color from the soil, you just happened to pull three jokers from the genetics deck. You might grow the same seeds next year and have a different result, and I would expect that could be a pretty safe bet. Steve's right though, you didn't say which seeds your plants were from, perhaps they have a history of throwing white fruit, perhaps they are all 2003 seeds and we'll all find out what they produce together. You also didn't say how old the fruit were, but being this is September already, I wouldn't expect much change in color if they were set at the usual time in the season.

9/3/2004 1:44:27 AM

Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

I have on plant from 1458 Whittier 03 and one from 1172 Greer 02. As well I have one plant from Don Langvin's "competitive strain" seed, can't remember the name of the pumpkin though. As well I have 3 plants grown from seed packet "Dills Atlantic Giant". All three of the packet seeds have great colour... deep orange/red but all stopped growing at around 150 lbs. My three premium plants all have a white or cream complection. The Greer is starting to take on a orange/ pink tint the last fer days. Check out my pics: http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2004&grower=27157&action=L

9/3/2004 3:30:20 PM

seacoast of NH

My biggest pumpkin is white also, but I don't want a white pumpkin so I'm going to give it some food coloring and see what happens. I'll let ya know if it works.

9/10/2004 7:50:43 PM

seacoast of NH

Well here are the results, the food coloring worked to a point, with more time I think it would have been deeper color. Next I tried a oil base coloring and rubed it on the pumpin skin, this really did work, a few applications and it is orange. Now I'm wondering as I look at the pumpkins in the growers digest I think the ones that are white are the late setting fruit. I don't see so many that set fruit early on that are white. Am I right? All my fruit that set early is very orange.

9/25/2004 8:53:34 PM