SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- While it might be pumpkin spice season at your local coffee shop, pumpkin season is still a way away.
The only things that are orange in this pumpkin patch are the flowers that will become pumpkins. Some are starting to get a little more color, though the picking season is of course October.
“We wait until closer to mid to end of June to plant ours so they’re turning orange closer to October so we’re not storing them too long.”
Dave Freshour, co-owner of Thistleberry Farms in South Bend, says the pumpkin crop is looking good this year, even with some dryer conditions at the beginning of the growing season.
“Pumpkins would like an inch of rain a week which we rarely get that much on a weekly basis so, but you know they’ll do okay, they're fairly deep rooted. Some of them will get some supplemental water with drip irrigation, but they're doing okay.”
Drier conditions would cause smaller pumpkins when harvest comes around, and since June conditions have been teetering on the moderate drought level. But with extreme rainfall that Michiana has seen in the past month, Freshour’s not too worried about his crop.
“Recently we’ve gotten some decent amounts, enough to keep them going, so the pumpkins are looking good.”
Coffee shops around Michiana are gearing up for fall with the official start of pumpkin spice season even though yes, it is August.
As much as we can complain about how early the pumpkin spice season usually is, this year it feels right on time with the cool overnight conditions that we’ve been seeing the past couple of days. Many people say it's sweater weather, though I’m still sticking to the jacket for now.
Since the start of the pumpkin spice craze, first conceived by Starbucks in 2003, release dates have traditionally been the first Tuesday of September, until 2018, where it switched to the last Tuesday in August.
Now again that might seem early, but remember Michiana, meteorological fall starts on Sept. 1, so we are technically in the last week of summer.
Average highs are also going to be dipping below the 80-degree mark on Aug. 29, so anywhere in the five-day range, or when we first start to see a chill in the air, in this meteorologist's opinion, is a great time for the meteorological start of pumpkin spice season.