Where the seeds came from
This is a large variety of winter squash, with delicious yellow flesh. I started growing it about four years ago. I bought the seeds originally from Tamar Organics. I started out with a pack of six because when you buy squash seeds you don’t get many. Since then I’ve been keeping my seeds and getting more and more and more, and been sharing them with friends.

Why I grew it
I wanted a vegetable that could sit through the winter, that you’re like, “Shoot we’ve got to eat tonnes of this at the moment.” These can keep, as long as you keep them in the cool, for months. This one’s four and a half kilos. We’re still eating the soup that I made on Monday, so it’s given us many meals of that.

How to grow
The pumpkin was bigger than a human head. I knew that I needed a lot of space, but I didn’t know how much space I needed. It became this big tangle. It was one of the sunniest spots of the raised bed. From seedling I dug a little hole and planted it there and that was that. It was actually very low maintenance. It became massive very quickly so we hardly even noticed it, the pumpkin itself and went away on holiday in August for 2 weeks and came back and it was big.

Zimbabwean Pumpkin Recipe
When it’s tender, take the leaves, clean the stalk. Then we cook the leaves together with the flowers. We put peanut butter, or we cook with tomatoes and onion. The pumpkin fruit we cut and cook them, and then we blend with peanut butter and we eat them like a pudding.