January/February 1979
By Richard D. Reed
It's a policy around our place to try a newly released or unusual vegetable each year, and that's how we came to know "Lady Godiva ... the pumpkin with naked seeds".
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My family has always loved the taste of pumpkin seeds(either as a healthy at—home snack or for "backpacking power" out on the trail) but the typically sharp-edged leather—hard hulls really used to dampen our enthusiasm for these autumn treats.
Lady Godiva, however, has changed all that! You see, this hybrid pumpkin features seeds whose shells have been bred down to a light cellophane-like film, and—in the four years since we discovered Lady G.—we've never grown any other kind of pumpkin.
Of course, this naked-seeded jack-o-lantern does have some drawbacks. If you like a rich, golden-colored pumpkin, for instance, you'll have to look elsewhere. Godiva's hue, even when ripe, often tends toward yellow with pale green stripes. Obviously, looks aren't everything, but this fruit is also more thin-skinned and just a little less tasty than other pumpkins we've grown ... though nobody will turn his or her nose up at a Lady Godiva pie! On the positive side, however, Lady G. pumpkins will keep (when stored at 50 to 55°F) for about three months.
We don't can any pumpkin "flesh" (though we do dry some for soups), so we're only able to use about 40 of the four- to six-pound globes each year ... including the not-so-mature or slightly spoiled pumpkins that go to our chickens after we've plundered the seeds. (In case you're wondering, it takes about 20 of the fruits to produce each pound of cleaned seed.)
Those little "pumpkin nuts" can be a real chore to separate from the fruit's stringy innards, unless you know how! If you consider your pumpkin to be a globe—with the stem marking north—you should slice right around the "equator". Then, find the three (or sometimes four) pairs of seed rows that are arranged around the inner center of each "hemisphere", reach in along the outside of these rows, and--with the tips of your fingers—"milk" the seeds from their clinging umbilical fibers cleanly and easily!