Did You Know: Five pumpkins per person!
The pumpkin by your front door may look like a single decoration, but it represents a surprisingly large slice of the fall crop. U.S. farmers harvest roughly 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins each year. If you break that down into average-sized carving pumpkins, it works out to about five pumpkins for every person in the country.
And most of the crop isn't headed to the kitchen. About 80 percent is harvested specifically for October. That means more than 800 million pumpkins go to seasonal decorations and Halloween backdrops, while an estimated 150 million are carved into jack-o'-lanterns each year.
The pumpkin has a few surprises
- Jack-o'-lanterns started with turnips and potatoes. Irish immigrants carved those vegetables to scare away spirits before pumpkins became the familiar choice.
- Pumpkins are about 92% water, which helps explain why they feel so heavy to carry and why they can rot quickly after carving.
- A medium-sized carving pumpkin contains about 500 seeds.
- Pumpkin blossoms are edible and are often fried into a crispy appetizer.
- The heaviest pumpkin ever recorded weighed 2,749 pounds, heavier than a standard compact car.
