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Rainy Weather Hurts Maryland's Pumpkin Supply

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- It takes sunny, dry weather to grow pumpkins.

So it's no surprise that after a very rainy summer -- Maryland ended up with soggy pumpkins.

According to pumpkin grower Steve Weber, "There's just too much water in the pumpkin, some of them you can hear it sloshing around. Just too much water."

Weber couldn't grow enough to stock his Parkville store. So he's shipping in pumpkins from the Midwest to meet demand.

He's far from alone.

"There are pumpkins here in Maryland and on the East Coast, but generally from Georgia to Massachusetts, especially the eastern seaboard, pumpkins have not done that well," he said.

Too much rain hurt pumpkins when they were just starting out as flowers, because it takes bees to pollinate pumpkins, and they too like it sunny and dry.

"When it's cloudy and rainy there's not a lot going on pollination wise," Weber added. "So you got a small crop. The fruit's smaller."

Weber is not passing on the cost of shipping pumpkins in.

It's the usual 59 cents a pound.

"I heard they were all shipped in the time because of the wet weather we've been having, but they look great to us," customer Lauren Edell said.

There's no way Webers wouldn't have pumpkin.

Half the farm's income is made in the five weeks before Halloween.

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