Pumpkin patch saved by lucky decision last year

Pumpkins are an iconic part of Halloween for many, but the summer's extreme heat has had an impact on this year's crop.

For some farms in the south of England, the droughts mean their pick your own patches will not be able to open their gates this season, or the harvests have been reduced.

Fortunately for Halloween fans in the North East, pumpkins are faring better, and whilst smaller than usual, there are still plenty to go around.

Simon Walton, farmer at Baydale Farm in Darlington, said they were really badly impacted by the droughts last year, but a lucky decision in the aftermath, has meant they can open as usual this year.

After a dry and hot summer last year, Baydale Farm decided to take a chance and purchase a larger variety of pumpkin seed.

At the time, they feared the following summer could have even more extreme heat, and that this would affect the ability for their normal-sized pumpkins to grow.

Walton said: "What we've done this year is we tried to preempt it by growing a bigger variety of pumpkin, because when they don't get the rain over summer they are smaller."

They hoped that by planting larger seeds, these pumpkins (while not as big as they should be) would compensate for when their usual pumpkins would not reach their full size.

Luckily, their decision paid off, as summer 2026 was the hottest on UK record, and across the country this meant pumpkins were smaller and ripening earlier than usual.

This is because pumpkins are made up of about 90% water, so without enough they struggle to grow.

Meanwhile, thanks to last year's prep, the Darlington farm is not in short supply of pumpkins and has a wide range of sizes.

Walton said they think there will be more demand for pumpkins at their farm this year as "the supermarkets haven't had as many, because a lot of the pumpkins are grown further south, which were impacted more by the drought".

However, this has come at a cost to them, because the larger seed varieties cost a lot more than regular pumpkin seeds.

Walton said their seed bill was up about 20-25% on previous years.

He added that the increased cost was also due to seed production being affected by the drought too, meaning there are less to buy.

In addition to having to spend more, they have also had to find more space for these larger pumpkin seeds to grow, as they need a wider patch of land to intake the amount of water they need.

This means that they have had to reduce the amount of other crops they would usually grow.

Walton said they do this: "To be able to grow into the big pumpkins that everybody seems to want these days."

Pumpkins are not the only crop that have been affected by the summer droughts.

William Maughan, the Northern Chairman of the National Farmer's Union, said: "It's been a challenging year for farmers, less so in the North East where we had a little bit more rain earlier in the summer, but it's been a challenging long, hot, dry summer for everyone."

He said most yields have been all right, but certain root crops such as potatoes, and anything that needs a lot of water have "maybe suffered a bit more".

Maughan commended Baydale for their thought process last year and said: "As farmers we all need to look at that: what crops we grow, how we grow them, what varieties we do and how we can better protect ourselves from these weather variations."

Follow BBC Tees on X,Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram and listen to Radio Tees on BBC Sounds.