Think outside the pumpkin
Tiffany Heater Account Manager | Burpee
It’s October and while it’s totally okay to have pumpkin spice everything now, there are a lot of beautiful options for fall decorating besides your standard jack-o-lantern. I love a good big fat orange pumpkin as much as the next person, but pumpkins come in more colors than just orange — and squash and gourds come in an even more beautiful assortment of colors.
Take my mantle for instance. Okay, I admit to picking up that cheese pumpkin, the corn and a few of the gourds at a local farm stand, but my prized pumpkins up there are the two beautiful blue pumpkins from a Small World of Color pumpkin mix I grew in my own garden. A little bit blue, a little bit pumpkin, as a standalone these are beautiful pumpkins, and they play so nicely with all their fall friends.
Another thing I can’t live without this time of year is Butternut Squash. I could eat it every day (but not until October) and a really easy one to grow is Butterbush. If all of your butternuts are ready to pick at once, or if you are just looking to spruce up the house, go ahead and pick them. If cured, they will often keep for months and still be plenty fine to eat after they sit out and look pretty for a while. So instead of sitting them on your drying rack or in the back of the fridge, break out that burlap table runner and a bowl full of butternuts and tada, your table is decorated for fall!
And finally, the answer to those cold fall nights when flowers are starting to die out in your planters: just pull out the plants that don’t look as good as they did a few weeks ago, and fill the empty space with a handful of gourds (don’t forget your Jack-Be-Littles!) and voila your front entrance is decorated for fall, too. That’s right I threw a few green tomatoes in there as well. Let’s be honest: they aren’t going to ripen in time for frost where I live, and while I am frying up green tomatoes like they are going out of style (recipe coming soon!) I have more than enough to spare!