Weather has caused problems in the pumpkin patch

Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang sought out the Great Pumpkin.

But this year’s Halloween in Regina likely has parents searching for any normal, orange gourd. That’s because some stores in the Queen City are plum out of the orange fruit.

One of the few remaining retailers in the area with a small batch left is Lincoln Gardens, also called Corn Maiden Market. It’s near Lumsden on the south side of Highway 20.

Owner Wayne Gienow said the extra rains this August and early snow in October killed most of his pumpkin crop.

“We left probably 90 per cent of it in the field … we’re talking 80,000 pumpkins,” said Gienow, who noted he usually only loses 10 per cent of his crop in a year of normal rain and precipitation.

That means he now has about 300 pumpkins left to sell to anyone eager enough to make the drive out to his farm.

“It’s really cold, so it depends on how much of a trouper you are and how desperately you want a pumpkin,” he joked.

Gienow also emphasized that he’s among a large group of farmers in Western Canada who got hit with the rough weather.

“It started raining in the end of August, and it didn’t stop,” he said. “It snowed in southern Alberta in mid-September, and took (pumpkins) out. We couldn’t get in the field because it was too wet.

“And it got too cold here and it took my crop out. Then it was the same thing in southern Manitoba with that big snow storm.”