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I didn't write this so don't beat me up over #4. I didn't correct it on purpose.


1.) Q. Where were the first pumpkins grown?

A. Pumpkins are believed to have been cultivated first in Central America. Spanish and Portuguese explorers carried pumpkin seeds back to Europe in the 14th century. In North America, Native Americans grew pumpkins for food long before the first Europeans arrived on the continent in the 1600s.

2.) Q. Why do we eat pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving?

A. In 1621, at the first Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Mass., to give thanks for their first successful harvest, they ate a pumpkin custard flavored with maple syrup and spices baked in pumpkin shells. The beloved Thanksgiving pumpkin pie evolved from this treat at the original "Plimoth" colony.

3.) Q. Is the pumpkin a vegetable or a fruit?

A. The pumpkin is actually a fruit, a member of the Cucurbitaceae family of plants with trailing vines.

4.) Q. How big was the largest pumpkin ever grown?

A. Gerry Checkon of Altoona, Pa., grew a pumpkin weighing 1,131 pounds from Atlantic Giant seed stock on Oct. 2, 1999.

5.) Q. How long does it take a pumpkin to mature and be ready for harvesting?

A. It takes pumpkins an average of 120 days to mature on the vine -- one reason they grow to be so large.

6.) Q. What happens to the seeds that are removed from Libby's pumpkins for canning?

A. The seeds from the best pumpkins are saved and used to plant the crop in the following years. Others are ground into mulch and applied to farmland.

-- Joyce Rosencrans

11/3/2004 4:48:03 PM

Hilpoltstein, Bavaria, Germany

A No. 4 needs some updating!

11/3/2004 5:36:04 PM

Cologne / Germany

No. 5 is questionable. Most people still think a big pumpkin needs a year or more to grow so big :)
No. 3 is also a problem - one of the press articles about my pumpkin this year claimed it belongs to the family of berry :)
IQ tests I know sound like this: How many AG seeds will you need to spread to dry before your wife leaves home :)

11/3/2004 6:46:18 PM

Hilpoltstein, Bavaria, Germany

No. 3:
The definition that I know is that all "fruits" produced by annuals (einjährige Pflanzen) are called vegetables (Gemüse) and all "fruits" produced by perennials (mehrjährige Pflanzen) are called fruits (Obst).

So, vegetables are e.g. pumpkin, cucumber, melon, tomato, bean, etc.

And fruits are e.g. apple, pear, strawberry, currant, grapes, etc.

Anyone familiar with this definition?

11/4/2004 11:16:34 AM

Wroclaw, Poland (51 N, 17 E)

I think that everything which is a fruit of smthng is a fruit like:
apple, pumpkin, tomato, berrys etc.

And vegetable is something what we eat, and it is not e fruit, for axample leaves, root etc. like:
carrot, letuce, potatoes, beetrout (wrong spelling ?)

nr 6 is strange question :-)

11/4/2004 3:06:16 PM

Litchfield N. H. 03052

I didn't think that there were any people out there that know that Bruce Whittier grew the largest pumpkin in the world ,1458 lbs. I know how big it was, I had the honor of helping to put it on the scale.

11/4/2004 6:42:44 PM

[email protected]

Maybe instead of beating each other up in the off-season we can create a truly accurate & current trivia quiz. It wouldn't be difficult for us to create a better quiz that's for sure. Then maybe we can copy it into Word & forward it to our local newspaper editors in Sept, 2005.

1.) Who grew the first 1000 lb pumpkin?

11/4/2004 9:11:43 PM

Long Island,New York

steve hoult...1010 in 1995 I believe

11/4/2004 9:30:55 PM

C N Y

the definition in the GIANT dictionary here at work in the library more or less says that a fruit is the seed-bearing, edible portion of a plant, which , to me would indicate
a pumpkin, an apple, a berry, a melon....
and in the same definition it says to "see also vegetable",
but i am quite opinionated and if Joel says "fruit", i say
"fruit", lol! although, green beans are hard to imagine being termed a "fruit"! ramble, ramble..........lol....

11/5/2004 1:57:37 PM