Cinderella Pumpkin

The great pumpkin vine

It's official.  The vine with the huge speckled leaves that sprouted from the compost pile is a pumpkin and one of my favorite to boot.  It's a Rouge vif D'Etampe, an heirloom variety from France more commonly known these days as Cinderella.  The nickname comes from the belief that this variety of pumpkin was the one the the fairy Godmother's used to make the coach that took Cinderella to the ball.

It is also reported to be the pumpkin the Pilgrims cultivated and served at the first Thanksgiving dinner, though I am skeptical of that. I thought the Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to grow pumpkins and that pumpkins are native to the Americas. Of course the New World had been discovered over 100 years before the Pilgrims landed so I suppose the French had time to develop this variety of pumpkin. Anyway, its a nice story. And this variety  is a good shape (sort of flat) to use as a soup tureen if you want to serve pumpkin soup. It's also a good pie pumpkin. As I said, one of my favorites.

The vine is now full of little round green pumpkins but the first one that came on is now big enough that its obviously a Rouge vif D'Etampes (although at this point it is a beautiful dark green). I am hopeful that at least this first one will ripen in time to save some seeds for next year!

I splurged and bought two packets of pelleted lettuce seed from Cook's Garden that are suppose to produce fall lettuce in 45 to 55 days. They arrived over the weekend and I've been so busy with work that I've not had time to do more than prepare a bed for them.  They are going into the bed that most recently held the first planting of green beans.  Last night I pulled out what was left of the beans after the deer had munched on them and tossed the vines to the cows. I tilled the bed with my spading fork and tonight I plan to sew the seeds. It's chilly right now, down in the forties but I'm hopefully of a warming trend in a few days so the seeds will sprout. I've never tried the pelleted seeds before. For what I paid for them they should be shrouded in gold!