UK pumpkin patches decimated by record drought

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Pumpkins are displayed at a pumpkin patch in Tomball, Texas, during the harvest season on October 7, 2025 (AFP/Getty) AFP/Getty

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Ruffins Farm in Suffolk grew around 10,000 pumpkins in a normal season. This year, roughly 50 developed. Liz Paterson and Andrew King, who have run the pick-your-own patch at Bury St Edmunds for several years, will offer no pumpkin crop at all — the driest conditions on record left them with a choice between irrigating squash and watering their 500 breeding ewes. The sheep won, and the pumpkins never pollinated.

The Met Office has just recorded the UK's warmest summer since measurements began, following widespread drought and repeated heatwaves. The consequences now land on seasonal farms that carry the entire weather risk themselves. Niall Smith of Picking Patch in the New Forest says his operation outsourced its pumpkin growing to a local family farm this year and still ended up with fruit 50 to 60 percent smaller than normal. In a good season he could call around and find 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 spare pumpkins; this year there is no stock anywhere. Many patches, he says, will run out before half term.

The response has been adaptation rather than closure. Picking Patch has reimagined itself as a pumpkin market with a heavy Halloween-events programme, no longer simply a pick-your-own site. Ross Wright, a farmer near Exeter, notes a national shortage of larger pumpkins in particular and says growers will simply have to plant more acres to secure the same Halloween volume.

At Ruffins Farm, the next move is already decided: spend what money is left on seed, drill the patch again, and see. Paterson and King fear another drought next year given the El Niño pattern. If it fails again, they say they will have to ask whether the climate still works for pumpkins at all — and what else a Suffolk smallholder can do instead.