The Best Pumpkins for a Fall Front Porch

The first almost-cool morning showed up this week. It never lasts in early August, by ten the heat is back and leaning on everything, but for an hour the patch smelled like fall and I stood there with my coffee thinking about porches. Specifically, about which of the pumpkins swelling out there will earn a spot by the front door come October. People ask us every year about the best pumpkins for a fall front porch, and it is a better question than it sounds, because the difference between a pumpkin that graces your steps until Thanksgiving and one that slumps into a sad puddle by mid October comes down to variety and a little patience.

The carving pumpkins at the grocery store are bred for size and a quick sale. They are thin walled and watery, which is lovely for a jack-o-lantern that only needs to survive one spooky week. A porch pumpkin has a longer job. It sits out in sun, rain, and the occasional early frost, and it needs to look good doing it.

What Makes the Best Pumpkins for a Fall Front Porch

Three things, in my experience. A hard rind, first. If your thumbnail cannot dent it at harvest, rain and porch life will not bother it for months. A solid, well-cured stem, second, because the stem is where rot usually starts, and a thick corked handle seals the deal. And third, dense flesh. The long-keeping heirlooms were bred by people who needed pumpkins to last in a root cellar until February, and that same keeping quality is exactly what a porch display asks for. We wrote up the whole science of it in our guide to storage pumpkins that last all winter, and every bit of it applies to the front steps.

Color and character matter too, of course. That is where the old varieties quietly run away with the contest. Once you have set a deeply ribbed French heirloom next to a smooth buff cheese pumpkin and a warty little Japanese squash, the pile of identical orange globes at the supermarket starts to look a bit lonesome.

Heirlooms That Earn Their Spot by the Door

If I could only pick one porch pumpkin, it would be Musquee de Provence. It looks like something out of a storybook, deeply lobed and heavy shouldered, ripening from deep green to a warm bronze that goes beautifully with everything autumn owns. It keeps for months, and when the season ends it is one of the best eating pumpkins we grow, so nothing is wasted.

Right beside it I would set a Long Island Cheese, the soft tan wheel that gave cheese pumpkins their name. It is calm where the Provence is dramatic, and the two together look like they have been posing for oil paintings since 1850, which, more or less, they have. Both are moschata types, which means they shrug off our worst pest here in Kansas and store famously well.

For the small spots, the porch rail, the windowsill, the top of the mailbox post, a Black Futsu is my favorite oddball. It starts nearly black and slowly ages to a dusty chestnut over the weeks it sits out, so the display actually changes as fall deepens. Guests will ask about it. You will get to say you grew it.

Growing Your Own Porch Pumpkins

Here is the quiet secret: a homegrown porch pumpkin outlasts a store-bought one almost every time, because you control the two steps that matter. You can let it ripen fully on the vine, until the rind passes the thumbnail test and the stem starts to cork. Our morning walk-through on how to tell when a pumpkin is ripe covers the field cues. And you can cure it properly, ten days or so somewhere warm and airy, which hardens the rind and heals the little scuffs that would otherwise invite rot. Cut with a generous stub of stem, carry it like a melon and never by the handle, and set it on the porch with a dry board underneath if the boards catch rain.

It is a little act of faith, planting a seed in late spring for a display you will not see until October. But that is most of gardening, and honestly most of the good things. The soil does its slow work all summer, and then one cool morning you carry something heavy and beautiful up the front steps and it greets everyone who comes to the door until the snow flies.

So when someone asks me about the best pumpkins for a fall front porch, the real answer is: the ones you grew yourself, cured well, from a variety with some history in its bones. Next spring, tuck a few seeds in the ground for it.

If you want to grow your own porch display next year, our long-keeping storage squash and pumpkins are the place to start. Every packet holds 10 to 20 seeds, which is plenty for a porch full.

All seeds ship from Newton, Kansas. Free shipping on orders over $35.

From the patch in Newton, Kansas.