Otto’s Pumpkin Patch 2026: The Pumpkins That Made It
Every year at Otto’s Pumpkin Patch seems to have its own personality. Some years everything falls into place. Other years, Mother Nature makes you work for every pumpkin.
2026 was definitely the second kind.
We went into this season with high hopes for a big crop, but almost from the beginning, the pumpkin patch faced some serious challenges.
The Deer Found the Buffet
Our biggest problem this year came courtesy of the local deer population.
They discovered the patch early and apparently decided Otto’s Pumpkin Patch was their new favorite restaurant. They got after a lot of the young plants, eating leaves, vines and new growth before many of the plants ever had a chance to really get established.
A healthy pumpkin plant can sometimes bounce back from a little damage, but when deer repeatedly visit young vines, there’s only so much a plant can take.
We lost a significant portion of our potential crop before pumpkin season really got rolling.
Then Came the Cold
As if the deer weren’t enough, we also dealt with some major cold snaps while the plants were still young.
Pumpkins love warmth, and those stretches of unusually cold weather didn’t do us any favors. Some plants were visibly stressed, while others simply never seemed to recover or grow as aggressively as we normally see.
Between the cold and the deer, it became pretty obvious that our original crop expectations were going to have to change.
About 20% — But We’ll Take It
When everything was said and done, we ended up producing only about 20% of the pumpkins we expected this season.
That number sounds disappointing — and it certainly wasn’t what we planned — but looking at the pumpkins that survived tells another story.
We still ended up with a great assortment.
There are classic orange pumpkins, pale green varieties, striped gourds, warty pumpkins and one especially impressive big guy that looks like he fought through the entire season just to make it onto the table.
They aren’t all perfectly shaped.
They aren’t all perfectly orange.
And that might be what makes this year’s crop one of our favorites.
Every pumpkin in the 2026 harvest earned its spot.
A Tough Year at the Patch
Growing pumpkins has a funny way of reminding you that you’re never completely in charge.
You can prepare the soil.
You can plant the seeds.
You can water.
You can weed.
You can watch the vines grow.
And then a deer walks in at 2:00 in the morning and eats half your work.
That’s farming — even on the backyard scale.
The 2026 season gave us plenty of lessons, and we already know one major priority for next year:
Better deer protection.
We’ll also be paying even closer attention to early-season temperatures and looking for ways to give the youngest plants a little more protection when those unexpected cold nights arrive.
The 2026 Otto’s Pumpkin Patch Harvest
So here it is — the 2026 crop from Otto’s Pumpkin Patch.
It may only represent about 20% of what we originally hoped to harvest, but after everything these plants went through, we’re pretty proud of it.
The deer may have won a few rounds.
Mother Nature definitely landed a few punches.
But Otto’s Pumpkin Patch still produced pumpkins.
And we’ll be back in 2027.
Older. Wiser. Better protected. And ready for the deer.
