Her children came up with the idea as a way of selling their grandmother's abundant crop. They made a sign saying 'pumpkins for sale' and the pumpkins were gone in an instant.

This was how Lut hit upon the idea of growing pumpkins herself. She bought a few books and began to order seeds. 'At first I thought pumpkins were always orange', she says. Her first variety was therefore the so-called 'cinderella pumpkin', the orange whopper that every housewife sometimes makes into soup.

foreign customers arriving, who tell us which varieties are popular in their own countries, and the next year she gives them a try. Now Lut has a wide range of pumpkins and squashes growing in her garden and not all of them are orange by a long way.
One of her favourites is the Marina di Chioggia. It is greyish-green and very knobbly with a so-called 'Turkish cap'. I was not the only one who had to get used to it. At the beginning my customers gave me some strange looks when I tried to sell them green pumpkins. People are very attached to the orange colour, although ordinary orange pumpkins are often the least tasty of all. They are not usually good for anything apart from soups. There are different ones, with delightful hazelnut or chestnut flavours. You can do almost anything with it.

The most wonderful pumpkin that Lut has ever seen, however, is the Golden hubbard; an orange pumpkin which is so hard that she has broken knives on it before now. 'You have to drop it on the ground and hope that it will break, otherwise you haven't got a hope. Once it is open, however, and you somehow manage to scrape the flesh of it, you have found the food of the gods. I have sown that variety for the first time this year. We will see what comes up.'

Open Pumpkin Day

In this way Lut's little company grew from one year to the next. Every autumn there were more varieties, different shapes and colours. The chalk board has been replaced by a large white sign with orange writing in four languages..

'At the beginning my
customers gave me strange looks
when I tried to sell them
green pumpkins'

She explains a mouth-watering oven-baked recipe based on pumpkin, tomato and onion. 'If customers
want, I can give them some

Her garage shop usually opens in September. This year we will be organising an open day for the first time on Saturday 20 September, with recipes,

That autumn's harvest was a good one and more and more people began to stop for the pumpkin sign. 'Yes, and then you get some customers who come in with so many questions that you panic and wonder why on earth you ever started. I didn't know anything about pumpkins at all.

Orange unfairly in first place

'To find out more I started to look at books on the subject, but I was also helped a lot by other pumpkin growers from Duisburg (Belgium, Brabant). Without their help I would never have got this far', says Lut. We also regularly get

all kinds of information and snacks to make your mouth water. On that day anyone is welcome to come to Tervuursesteenweg 26 in Duisburg.

                            Ines Minten