Pumpkin Perfection : Impromptu Patches Draw Those Searching for Jack-O’-Lanterns

It may not signal the same frenzy as the start of the Christmas shopping season, but another seasonal ritual has begun: the search for the perfect pumpkin.

Families were out in force on Monday, hunting through vacant lots transformed into “pumpkin patches,” carpeted with straw and heaped with gleaming orange globes.

And as pumpkin season starts in earnest, some are promising that the bad pumpkin news in much of the country will not be repeated here.

“All those kids in Orange County will have their pumpkins, believe me,” said George Perry, 76, one of California’s leading pumpkin producers and owner of George Perry and Sons, based in Manteca in the San Joaquin Valley.

From New Jersey to Georgia and the Midwest, drought and scorching heat have hurt the harvest and sent prices soaring.

But although California’s pumpkin planting was delayed by a wet winter, several experts say the crop here is good. Some dealers are reporting that prices have not risen from last year.

And in some sales lots in Orange County on Monday, shoppers found much more than pumpkins. A number of these so-called “pumpkin patches” have evolved into quasi-fairs, offering animal rides and other treats for the children.

At Pumpkin City at the Laguna Hills Mall, most visitors, toting children and camcorders, said they were there not for pumpkins but for the entertainment.

The lot is dotted with small, carnival-like rides and cages for pigs, chickens, goats and turkeys. A pumpkin-headed character named Pumpkin Man makes children laugh by tripping over bales of hay.

Trevor Gomez, 7, of Mission Viejo, seated himself on a bale of hay with a pumpkin in his lap, practicing his carving skills with a small knife.

“I like carving the pumpkins because you get to eat the seeds and you get messy,” the boy said.

This was Gomez’s second trip to the lot in as many days. His mother, Aida Gomez, 39, ran out of film on the family’s first trip, before she could get her children on the ponies.

She said she probably will return a few more times before they choose a pumpkin.

“It’s just a really nice way to spend the afternoon,” Gomez said.

Besides real pumpkins, shoppers can buy pumpkin toys, pumpkin balloons and pumpkin-flavored bubble gum at Pumpkin City’s Pumpkin Farm in Santa Ana.

Jeff Keenan, general manager of the one in Laguna Hills, said the firm had no trouble securing pumpkins and, because of the quantity bought, is charging about the same as last year.

But the owner of the pumpkin patch at Baker and Bear streets in Costa Mesa said she has not received the number of pumpkins she ordered. The woman, who would not give her name, said she was still hoping to get more pumpkins to fill the sparse lot.

Torrential rains followed by a nationwide heat wave inflicted major damage on pumpkin patches across the country, particularly in the East and Midwest, forcing some California growers to increase prices for what was left of their 1995 harvests, said Perry, a pumpkin grower for 65 years who sells primarily to the major supermarket chains throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties. He said he conscientiously avoided selling to East Coast sources because of a loyalty to customers here.

“We saw the handwriting on the wall,” Perry said. “We can’t afford to be short. We sell out to people back East, then next year, when they don’t come around, our loyal West Coast customers just won’t be here. But some guys just don’t care. They saw a chance and grabbed it.”

Because so many of his competitors sold to buyers in the East, the price here, he said, is bound to be higher.

On Monday, prices at the pumpkin lots started at $1 for pumpkins that fit in your palm to about $9.50 for 11-inch pumpkins at one Santa Ana stand. A giant pumpkin, reaching thigh high, was priced at more than $50.

Bob Krauter, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau in Sacramento, said it’s “been a challenge for growers throughout the state, just trying to get their crops in on time, to make sure they’re harvested on time.”

But at Cal Poly Pomona, which annually grows a pumpkin crop on 50 acres, this year’s yield was one of the best ever.

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Times correspondent Hope Hamashige and staff writer Mike Granberry contributed to this story.

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Pumpkin History

One hundred years ago, pumpkins were a prime Orange County crop. Today, so few are grown that they are lumped together with other specialty crops in agricultural figures. Some county jack-o’-lantern highlights:

* Pumpkinville: Name referring to the southwest section of Orange, along Palmyra Avenue, in the late 1800s. Sometimes all of west Orange embraced the title, occasionally spelling the name “Punkin-ville.”

* County Oddity: At the first Orange County Fair, in 1890, a local farmer exhibited pumpkins so large that it took two men to carry one into the hall. The pavilion became known as “The Pumpkin Show.”

* Largest Pumpkin: The honor goes to Jim Layman who, in 1874, raised a 301-pound pumpkin in Gospel Swamp (Fountain Valley).

* Cash Crop: Pumpkins were so abundant that an 1894 ad in the Santa Ana Standard promised “delivered pumpkins at $2.50 per ton.”

Source: Jim Sleeper’s Orange County Almanac of Historical Oddities and local pumpkin patches.