From Patch To Home, 5 Things To Know About Pumpkins

Time to buy a pumpkin? There's plenty of opportunities to do so at retail outlets, but also at pumpkin patches throughout the Greater Brandon area that have been set up temporarily to sell for a cause the squash-like fruit.

Area schools, for example, including Buckhorn, Brooker, Mintz and Valrico elementary schools, Burns and Mulrennan middle schools and Bell Shoals Academy, will benefit from pumpkin sales made at the corner of Lumsden Road and Parsons Avenue.

The popular pumpkin patch at St. Andrews United Methodist Church in Brandon, at the corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Bryan Road, is scheduled to open fr business Oct. 8 (a day later than originally advertised on the church's marquee sign).

What's there to know about pumpkins? First off, it's a fruit, because it grows from a plan and has seeds. Get up to speed, with the facts below.

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Five Things To Know About Pumpkins:

• Think you have a big pumpkin? It won't set records, unless you can top the 1,810-pound pumpkin grown in 2010, weighing "as much as a dairy cow or roughly half the weight of a small cow," according to History.com.

• The site notes as well that U.S. growers produce more than 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins each year, "more than twice the weight of the Empire State Building" in New York City.

• Top pumpkin-producing states are Illinois, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan.

• What do pumpkins, cucumbers, honeydew melon, cantaloupe, watermelon and zucchini have in common? They're all members of the gourd family. That means it's a fleshy, typically large fruit with a hard skin.

• Bats, wolves, lions, flags, pilgrims, patriots, the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin, what do they have in common? They're among the numerous pumpkin carving patterns that can be downloaded online at History.com, featuring seasonal themes, historical figures, and more.