Pick a pumpkin and pop it in a pot

This fall’s first brush with near-frost left me with fresh blue plumbago blooms and red peppers licking like flames up through the green leaves.

I know that some people covered their plants that cold night last week, but I rarely if ever cover plants in the fall. If Mother Nature says it’s time to go, well, the plants are part of nature. Their days are numbered. (I’m more likely to cover plants on the spring side of things if we get a late cold snap, because there’s the whole season ahead.)

But even if I don’t bring my plants in, I will bring my pumpkins in off the porch to prolong their freshness if frost is forecast. And frost often happens before Halloween. Oct. 25 is the date of the first average fall frost (32 or lower) in Wichita; Nov. 9 is the date for the first average freeze (28 or lower).

Pumpkins may be the icon of fall, taking in all of the senses: the look (while I love the red-orange Cinderellas and the pink Long Islands and the New Zealand blues, the old-fashioned orange is as tantalizingly gorgeous as ever); the taste (in theory even if we don’t eat them); the smell (in theory even if we don’t smell them); the feel of the smooth skin; the satisfying thud when you give it a slap.

My friend Mary Lou told me about a great buy on pumpkins — even some of the unusual shapes and colors — at Dillons. I was tempted to dash over, but I like to go to the pumpkin patch to get my pumpkins. Like a Christmas tree farm, these excuses to go agrarian have to be embraced whenever we get the chance.

A couple of other places to buy pumpkins this weekend are Bootanica at Botanica and the Prairie Pumpkin Festival at Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston, both taking place Saturday. The last farmers market of the season in Old Town will be this Saturday as well, from 8 a.m. to noon; there, the emphasis will be on pumpkins that you can pick out for eating. (You’ll also be able to find area-grown Chautauqua Hills blueberries, as well as raspberries and blackberries among the produce for sale.)

It’s fun to arrange pumpkins like flowers on the front porch or in the yard, using containers if you want. The October issue of Victoria magazine has some cute ideas:

▪ White pumpkins piled atop moss inside a lantern.

▪ A squat clay pot holds a short stack of equally squat, fat pumpkins separated by a natural doily of dried corn-stalk leaves. A vine of bittersweet winds around the lip of the pot like a loose wreath.

▪ A New Zealand Blue pumpkin crowns an urn, again decorated with bittersweet, moss and dried leaves of corn stalks.

“Stack wide, flat gourds for an earthy ensemble,” the magazine suggests.

I’m reading a story from another newspaper asking whether people buy real or fake pumpkins. Again with the Christmas-tree parallels. JoAnn sells carvable fake pumpkins, this story says. When it comes to carving, I choose neither real nor fake. I always want my pumpkins to last through Thanksgiving at least.

If you do carve pumpkins for Halloween, do so as close to the event time as possible, and put petroleum jelly on the cut surfaces to help preserve them longer.

We are only three weeks away from the end of daylight saving time, when we will all turn into pumpkins. During these precious weeks, the days are still longish, and the landscape is still green, but the cooler weather gives us the best of both summer and fall.

They beg us to go outside, whether predawn for a lunar eclipse or early evening for dinner.

Ya Ya’s recently had the wide garden beds in its patio relandscaped. Mark Matney of Tree Top Nursery said it’s simply an example of using really good plant material to span the seasons with interest. You can get ideas for your own yard while eating your gnocchi.

And while we’re talking about it: Pick your last peppers and tomatoes before the first frost, and dig your sweet potatoes before the first freeze. Pick flowers the day before you know they’re going to turn to mush.

Hopefully the pumpkins will outlast them all.

This story was originally published October 10, 2014 at 3:21 PM with the headline "Pick a pumpkin and pop it in a pot."