Pumpkin farms ‘at the mercy of Mother Nature’ after extreme weather in Canada

From destructive hail to excessive rain, drought and extreme heat, severe weather is taking a toll on pumpkin farms across Canada as growers prepare for the busy fall season.

Farmers in several provinces say unusually intense or poorly timed weather has damaged crops, accelerated growing seasons and made it increasingly difficult to predict what their fields will look like by Thanksgiving and Halloween.

In Ontario, Jordan Mackay saw firsthand how quickly a promising growing season could change.

“We lost our pumpkins, tomatoes, lots of strawberries,” Mackay told Global News, whose family is also involved with Pingle’s Farm Market and Nature’s Bounty Farm.

On Aug. 8, a severe hailstorm tore through his family’s Willowtree Farm in Port Perry, Ont., destroying more than 300 acres of crops in roughly 10 minutes.

“We’ve had hail before, but not wiping out all the crops to that devastating effect.”

The family’s other farms escaped the hail, but another weather problem soon emerged.

After what Mackay described as a good start to the growing season, heavy rainfall through August began taking a toll on pumpkins at the family’s Oshawa-area farm.

When pumpkin vines and roots remain wet, Mackay said they can develop fungal diseases that damage the plants and interfere with their growth. Persistently wet ground can also cause pumpkins themselves to rot.

“I was just in the patch yesterday walking around, and we saw a lot of powdery mildew,” he said.

Some pumpkins have already started rotting “due to the heavy rains we’ve had over the last number of weeks.”

Mackay said the intensity of some recent weather events and how localized they can be has made farming particularly challenging.

“It’s been a very tough season for weather and it’s very isolated storms,” he said.

The hailstorm that hit his Port Perry farm, for example, affected an area spanning only a few country blocks.