Tesco reports bumper pumpkin harvest for Halloween

Customers will be spoilt for choice this Halloween, with a bumper British pumpkin crop thanks to the warm weather. The unusually hot summer has produced an extra 100,000 of the country’s most popular spooky fruit, in a number of unusual colours, shapes and sizes.

Tesco has stepped in to stock a total of two million pumpkins, a five per cent increase on last year, and half of the stock will be increasingly popular, lesser-known varieties, which can easily be neglected by retailers and go to waste. This includes a new unusual grey blue variety, ‘The Blue Pumpkin’.

Tesco predicts the white ‘ghost pumpkin’ will double in popularity this year – with twice as many customers choosing this smaller ghoulish-sounding variety to decorate their homes.

New and lesser-known varieties, such as the ‘Superfreak’ (a small orange variety covered in mottled green bumps), are set to spook out customers who like to make especially scary decorations.

Jordan Blandford, pumpkin buyer for Tesco said: “The pumpkin carving skills of our customers have reached new heights in recent years. Everyone is looking to carve a unique design to show off and impress the neighbours. Spoiling customers with a variety of unusually coloured pumpkins will give Tesco shoppers a real competitive edge.”