Not all pumpkins are orange, and the new Buckskin pumpkin from Burpee is a great example of that. Buckskin is more of a buff color than a Jack-O-Lantern type orange. However, if you look inside, Buckskin is indeed the rich and deep orange you’d expect of a pumpkin.

Buckskin is in that rare pumpkin category that allows it two purposes. First, yes, you can use this pumpkin for festive autumn décor. I wouldn’t carve it, of course, because that would ruin Buckskin for its second purpose, which is in the kitchen. A colleague recently made two pies and a whole mess of pumpkin ravioli from just one Buckskin. And by all accounts, it was all delicious. Your typical Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins just don’t give you that volume of usable flesh and none of the flavor of a pumpkin you’d want to cook with.

How to Grow Buckskin

Expect pumpkins to be ready about 110 days after planting. They’ll have a Jack-o-Lantern shape, with a bit of a mottled appearance to the skin of varying shades of beige.

As for the weight of each pumpkin, here’s something interesting. The information Burpee sent me along with the sample plant earlier this spring said that the pumpkins would be about 12-18 pounds. Mine was 4 pounds. After writing in to the Burpee folks to ask if anyone else might have had weight issues with their pumpkins, two things occurred:

1. My 4 pounder may have been underweight because I planted it in mid summer. If I had planted it at the very beginning, I am sure it would have had more time to grow. Duly noted for next year for any pumpkin variety I grow.
2. The Burpee team got together to look over the weight data that they collected over several years including this year, and they’ve decided to adjust the “what to expect” weight to 8-12 pounds, even in their online catalog! I mean, wow, that’s still a heavy pumpkin! But now your expectations can be a little more in line with your reality.

Three Notes on Buckskin

• There’s a trend to bred vegetables—even pumpkins!—to fit in small spaces. Buckskin is not one of these small container-type varieties. It definitely needs to be grown in the ground as it produces large vines about 10-12 ft. long.
• Do not confuse this with Autumn Buckskin, which has more of a squat shape with deep ribs. Same color, different silhouette. And from what I hear, Autumn Buckskin is also a bit heavier.
• My paltry plant (yes, it was my own doing) grew exactly one pumpkin. I’ve been assured by the Burpee team that Buckskin will typically grow more than one fruit per vine. While I did see another starting to grow, it pooped out when it got to be bocci ball size. Not sure why, but again, it was likely something I did or did not do.