Speaking as a home gardener,
squash bugs are a pox and a pain and they are everywhere in North America. Sadly, squash bugs especially love pumpkins.
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| This year's haul from pumpkin patch. |
Ah, the Great
Pumpkin! If anything happens to you, how will Cinderella get to the ball? And what about the jack-o-lantern, the bright orange Halloween symbol that all little kids so adore? Not to mention Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, that fragrant dessert that embodies the American dream of plenty.
Climate change plus pumpkins... Some good questions here. How will climate change potentially affect squash bugs, and thus pumpkin crops? Will squash bugs enjoy warmer average temperatures, and if so, will that lead to increased pesticide applications? How might that affect the supply of pumpkins? How long will it be economical for us to visit the local pumpkin patch every fall and fill wheelbarrows with this nutritious and symbolic vegetable?
Before you read my speculations, first get started on this recipe. I don't always care for pumpkin myself, but this coffee cake is quite delicious. Pumpkin-doubters, you will like it. Pumpkin lovers, go bake a pie in order to get your pumpkin immersion experience.
PUMPKIN COFFEE CAKE
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| I was lucky to get a picture before the coffeecake disappeared. |
(original recipe here, I altered ingredients and edited directions*)
Ingredients
TOPPING: (This makes too much, in my opinion. Save what you don't use in fridge to sprinkle over baked apples for dessert sometime.)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar (use more)
1/4 cup sugar (use less)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 generous tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)
CAKE:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup brown sugar plus 1/4 cup refined)
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream (I used 1/2 c. sour cream and 1/2 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt)
1/2 cup pumpkin (canned, or cooked and mashed fresh pumpkin)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, whatever sounds good
pinch teaspoon salt
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour two 8-inch round baking pans... or, if you are like me, cuss when reading that instruction because you don't own any pan in that weird dimension, let alone two of them, why would you? I substituted a 9x9 square pan plus a funky little casserole dish and the Earth did not once waver in its orbit. Warning: The cake DOES rise high, so when you get to that step, do not overfill.
Make topping first: In a small bowl, combine sugars and cinnamon. Use two table knives or a pastry cutter to "cut" in the cold butter until the mixtures looks like very delicious crumbs. Stir in the nuts. Refrigerate topping mixture while you make the cake.
Cake: In mixer or by hand, cream together softened butter and sugar. Add eggs one a time, beating well after each addition. In separate bowl, combine sour cream, pumpkin, and vanilla, mix well. In another separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Alternately add dry ingredients and sour cream mixture to creamed mixture in original mixing bowl. Beat on low until just barely blended.
Spread the batter into the two greased and floured pans (of your choice). Reminder: Do not overfill. Sprinkle both pans with the topping. Bake both pans together in the oven at 325 degrees for 40-50 minutes and, as always, when testing doneness please use your good judgement and observation skills. Toothpick should come out clean.
* The original recipe editor was totally asleep at the wheel, and/or had never actually tried to follow the recipe instructions.
Cake done? Mouth full? Back to squash bugs.
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| Squash bug nymphs. Credit: CSU Extension. |
No, wait, let's talk about pumpkins first. Pumpkins probably originated in North America, most likely in Mexico, but they now grow on every continent except for Antarctica. Pumpkins are packed full of carotenoids and are very good for you, which is why I persist in eating them, argh.
According to the 2007 U.S. Agricultural Census, the pumpkin processing crop is not a huge moneymaker for Kansas - 135 farms harvested only about 1,008 acres - but my guess is that most of these pumpkin acres were indeed ag tourism-related, ie, the pumpkin patch. That economic impact was not accounted for in the census. Illinois grows and processes a whopping 95% of the pumpkins for the U.S. market.
Which likely means that Illinois also has one heck of a lot of
squash bugs. Those little suckers (literally, they suck the sap from the leaves, causing the leaf to wilt, and the plant often dies and/or becomes diseased) hide under the leaves, are hard to see, and if you don't kill them in the nymph stage, you're pretty much screwed. Squash bugs will delight in overwintering in your garden or field. Long hard freezes are your friend, and in fact your best hope for controlling these pests.
Oh yeah, climate change... You see where this is going.
Let's review the
general impact of climate change on insects: According to the
Agriculture chapter (.pdf) in the
U.S. Global Change report (2009), climate change and warming average temperatures will work out pretty well for most bugs:
Many insect pests and crop diseases thrive due to warming, increasing losses and necessitating greater pesticide use. Warming aids insects and diseases in several ways. Rising temperatures allow both insects and pathogens to expand their ranges northward. In addition, rapidly rising winter temperatures allow more insects to survive over the winter, whereas cold winters once controlled their populations.
Some of these insects, in addition to directly damaging crops, also carry diseases that harm crops. Crop diseases in general are likely to increase as earlier springs and warmer winters allow proliferation and higher survival rates of disease pathogens and parasites. The longer growing season will allow some insects to produce more generations in a single season, greatly increasing their populations.
Finally, plants grown in higher carbon dioxide conditions tend to be less nutritious, so insects must eat more to meet their protein requirements, causing greater destruction to crops.
Sounds like fun... for the insects.
Even today, when global warming scenarios are only starting to kick in, if you can effectively control squash bugs on a commercial scale without pesticides then it's news to me. Sure, there are
integrated pest management options: plant bug-resistant pumpkin varieties, keep excess foliage in the patch to a minimum, rotate crops, etc. However, you are probably still going to have to apply some sort of pest control, most likely a
pyrethrin or its synthetic counterpart, a pyrethroid.
So what are the potential impacts of climate change on commercial pumpkin crops? It seems logical that more bugs (if that happens, this is just me speculating, but it seems logical) will mean more pesticides. More pyrethroids on your pumpkin. However, using more pesticides usually tends to to result in more pesticide-resistant bugs, and squash bugs are becoming
resistant to pesticides already.
Also, while pyrethroids are by no means the yuckiest of the pesticides, they are indeed very toxic to aquatic organisms. If you are growing pumpkins in a field or garden that suffers a lot of sediment run-off - aka, erosion - then the pyrethroid will very likely end up in nearby water bodies. (Sorry, fish and other aquatic life, but I really wanted that nice big orange pumpkin.)
I just heard my organic gardening friends gasp.
No. Don't leap to the conclusion that more pesticides on pumpkins will necessarily mean more dangers to consumers, too. Since effective pesticide applications have to be made so early in the pumpkin growing season in order to catch the squash bug nymphs, pesticide residues on pumpkins are not usually a big problem. Pumpkins were once on the Environmental Working Group's infamous
"Dirty Dozen" list but have since been removed.
Overwhelmed? Eat some coffeecake, that's why it's there. Don't stop reading.
Also, remember that pests aren't the whole picture. Climate change could also have other impacts on
pumpkins. Higher nighttime temperatures, less water availability
and efficiency (meaning the plant is less able to effectively make use
of the water it does have), uncertainty over planting dates as seasons
and cycles shift, etc. These factors and others could all have an impact on yields.
Have another bite, and I will tell you what all this means for you, and the future of pumpkin in your life. For now, I won't explain the ecosystem/ pesticide bit about troubles with dead fish and an aquatic food chain with gaping holes. (We'll just sum up that part as "not good.")
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| Pumpkin. So easy to freeze your own. |
We don't know exactly what will happen when climate change meets pumpkins, but it's a good guess that the result will likely mean more expensive pumpkins. Some sort of pumpkin shortage is likely to occur in certain areas. Of course, some locations that couldn't grow pumpkins at commercial scale before might be able to in the future, too.
If it is economic to do so.
Even if new growers find themselves able to grow pumpkins - will they want to? Will the crop be profitable? Or will growing pumpkins cost them too much money in time, management, and inputs like pesticides?
I don't have any answers here. I'm just guessing. My usual prediction is that climate change will mean the slow yet inevitable disappearance of certain foods from our diet due to high costs and unavailability. Possibly losing
chocolate and coffee is one thing. People might have gone crazy from losing those in their diet, but I don't think anyone ever suffered a major nutritional deficiency as a result. However, losing something as healthy as a pumpkin, a foodstuff indigenous to the New World that almost anyone can grow almost anywhere - that's another issue entirely.
So what do you do? Is the pumpkin doomed?
Again, unknown. However, here's what I think I will do. While it really sucks, you can in fact control squash bugs much easier in your small vegetable garden than can a commercial pumpkin farmer in a big field. Just get out there, inspect the plants, and physically kill the damn bugs. Yes, I'm serious. I recommend you use gloves, and get out there early in the season because destroying the eggs is a lot easier than killing the adults. The adults crunch. It's gross.
Such as it is, that's my plan. I will attempt to grow more of my own pumpkins, hope it works, squash the eggs, and hopefully, come fall, I will at least have a few pumpkins to show for it. Then if my local pumpkin patch has a bad year (or if I can't afford to shop there anymore), I have back-up in the freezer and I won't have to buy the expensive canned pumpkin to make my coffeecake.
How to freeze pumpkin flesh? So easy. Take off the top, scoop out the seeds, chop up the pumpkin into slices, then bake it or throw it in the crockpot, whatever. After it's cooked, scoop out the cooked flesh, smash it up, and freeze it. If you are very domestic and have no fear of pressure cookers, you could even can the pumpkin. Really. I probably won't, but you can.
Or, you can always bake the pumpkin into a delicious coffeecake.
