• ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
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    12 hours ago

    Memory unlocked, lol:

    🎶

    Decomposing Pumpkins!

    Throw it at that plump kid

    Because his mom did

    Not give us good candy on Halloween!!

    🎶

  • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    Well, I doubt they can get larger than earth, so I’d say it’s somewhere between 3,000 lbs and earth’s weight.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      24 hours ago

      waste of resources, i thinks it mostly water+ all the plants diverting all its energy to the pumpkin, and no flowering too. the edible ones tend to be sugar pumpkins(pies,cakes,etc) which are the nice small spherical ones. i think you can eat ornamental pumpkins(not the fairy tail) they arnt that good though, we used to eat the ornamental ones after halloween, but its very time consuming to gut out the insides and the seeds and it tends to be messy, although the seeds can be harvested to be fried. the larger ones tend not to be edible.

      i think going for the sugar pumpkins is the best way to eat it, if you want to make something useful out of it.

        • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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          15 hours ago

          I’m assuming they mean the plant has any other flowers culled so as not to consume resources

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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        24 hours ago

        You have to gut the inside to make a jack-o-lantern, and I think I remember my mom cooking with that gunk from inside at least once or twice.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          bro you can make an amazing snack out of those pumpkin seeds. every year I try to do 2-3 jack-o-lantern pumpkins and end up with ~2l of seeds after scooping out all the innards. Dump them into a colander, rinse and scrub until all the pumpkin guts are washed out, and then roast them in your oven. I prep mine with a bit of olive oil then sprinkle with some hawaiian seasoning or garlic salt - spread it out on a baking sheet, 325f for an hour or so until thoroughly dry.

    • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Suppose the pumpkin plant could be bred or genetically engineered to retain the desirable taste of its fruits even at very large sizes.

      Would this even improve the caloric yield per acre? Or would the bottleneck be the available energy from photosynthesis? In other words do giant pumpkins take a proportionally larger amount of leaf surface area, such that you’re not actually getting any more pumpkin mass per acre than with many smaller pumpkins?

      As I understand it normal pumpkins are already pretty high up there in terms of caloric yield, so perhaps there’s not much more room to push it.

      • RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
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        19 hours ago

        It might be more efficient per acre, but it’s less efficient per person-hour.

        As the weight goes up, the stress on the skin goes up. But the skin doesn’t go any stronger.

        So you need to feed, support (literally) and manage them round the clock to control their growth and stop them from splitting and allowing pests and bacteria inside.

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    How does that work? Selective breeding? Fertilizer? Growth hormones? New growing techniques? What is it that’s allowing these pumpkins to get bigger and bigger?

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Giving farms water for practically free while private citizens have to buy it in bottles (from CocaCola or Nestle, who are also getting it for free) from the store because the water is either laden with e.coli (usually from the same farms not handling runoff of animal waste properly) or just…not there by the time it gets to them.

      Or PFAS. Can’t forget about that.

      3000lb pumpkins aren’t something to be proud of. They are trophies of gluttony.

      We burn down the Amazon to grow soy…not to feed people, but to feed cows. We are growing water intense crops like almonds basically in the fucking desert. And we are wasting tens of thousands of pounds of water to make a 3000lb pumpkin. Won’t get eaten. It will be on display until it rots. Meanwhile, I can’t wash my car in the summer…but I can pay the carwash! I can’t water my flowers, but the golf course can!

      What the actual fuck is wrong with people.

      • Soulcreator@programming.dev
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        15 hours ago

        I’m not an expert in the whole giant pumpkin phenomenon, but it’s my understanding that the pumpkins are generally grown by hobbyists for fun rather than farmers on an industrial scale. So I don’t think it’s a trade-off on our food system, where kids are starving in Africa because farmers are wasting their resources growing pumpkins. I think it’s more of an, “look what I did” type thing.

      • 0tan0d@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Your mixing commercial farming with enjoyment selective breeding. The 3k lbs pumpkin is only grown in a couple of plants. Anything growing too slow is removed ASAP and put in a compost pile. Its just a fun way to enjoy the growing season in the middle of bum fuck no where.

  • dumples@midwest.social
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    1 day ago

    I saw one of those around 2000 lb pumpkins. They are a beautiful sight. I want to grow one but I know I don’t have the space