The Patch Post

Prairie stories, growing tips, and reflections from our Kansas garden. Follow the seasons with Autumn Prairie Pumpkins.

Maggie sitting on a wooden porch step beside a container-grown mini butternut squash vine climbing a trellis, with a mug of coffee, on a Kansas summer morning

July 27, 2026

The Smallest Pumpkin Variety to Grow When Your Garden Is a Back Step

There is a pot on the back step that gets exactly six hours of sun and nothing else, and for two summers I ignored it....

Maggie saving heirloom pumpkin seeds from a ripe pumpkin at a Kansas farmhouse kitchen table - Autumn Prairie Pumpkins

July 24, 2026

What Is an Heirloom Seed? A Letter from the Patch

The seed packet on the kitchen table this morning was one I filled myself last October. Same shaky handwriting, same little Dickinson pumpkin sketched in...

Maggie of Autumn Prairie Pumpkins kneeling in a July pumpkin patch holding a garlic bulb, planning what to plant after pumpkins, coffee mug and seed envelopes in a basket beside her

July 22, 2026

What to Plant After Pumpkins in the Kansas Fall

The vines are at their loudest right now. Late July on the Kansas prairie, and the Seminole has claimed the fence line, the butternuts are...

Maggie holding a freshly harvested tan heirloom pumpkin in a farmhouse kitchen with a baked pumpkin pie and coffee mug - why homegrown pumpkins taste better - Autumn Prairie Pumpkins

July 20, 2026

Why Do Homegrown Pumpkins Taste Better? Notes from the Patch

Somebody asked me at the farmers market last fall why do homegrown pumpkins taste better, and I remember laughing, because she said it like a...

Illustration of a Kansas gardener kneeling in a green pumpkin patch beside a yellow Labrador, with a coffee mug on the soil and ripe pumpkins on the vines

July 17, 2026

Are Pumpkin Vines Poisonous to Dogs? What I Learned at Dawn

Cooper found the pumpkin patch before I did this morning. Nine years old, mostly deaf, entirely committed to whatever smells best, and by the time...

Maggie kneeling in a Kansas pumpkin patch at dawn, looking at deer hoof prints in the soil beside a bitten pumpkin leaf

July 15, 2026

Do Deer Eat Pumpkin Plants? What I Found in the Patch at Dawn

There were tracks in the soft dirt by the third row, two cloven prints pressed deep where I had watered the night before. Above them,...

Maggie counting small green pumpkins on the vine during a July morning walk in a Kansas pumpkin patch, coffee mug on the fence post

July 13, 2026

How Many Pumpkins Does One Plant Produce? A July Count

I carried my coffee out to the patch just after sunrise this morning, before the heat had any opinions, and did the thing I always...

July 12, 2026

Good Soap for Garden Hands: The Case for Cold Process

By late afternoon in July, my hands tell the whole story of the day. Soil worked into the knuckle creases, a little tomato-leaf green on...

July 11, 2026

The Squash Bug Battle Kit: What Actually Works

Every July the same war starts under the leaves. You lift a big Seminole leaf, and there they are: those neat bronze rows of squash...

Maggie kneeling in a Kansas heirloom pumpkin patch at sunrise, one hand on a ripening pumpkin, coffee mug beside her

July 10, 2026

Are Pumpkins a Fruit or a Vegetable? Notes from the Kansas Patch

The Long Island Cheese out in the north row is about the size of a dinner plate now, and this morning it held a bead...

Maggie kneeling by a backyard compost pile examining a volunteer pumpkin vine in a Kansas summer garden

July 08, 2026

Are Volunteer Pumpkins Safe to Eat? Notes from the Compost Pile

The first one showed up where I never planted it, right at the shoulder of the compost pile, two fat lobed leaves reaching up out...

Maggie in the Kansas pumpkin garden with her dachshund - Autumn Prairie Pumpkins

July 07, 2026

Are Pumpkin Flowers Edible? A Morning in the Kansas Patch

The best part of a July morning is the walk out before the heat sets in, coffee in one hand, dew still on everything. That...

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