Adrian We use the seeds to make a nice snack. We simply put a little salt on them, then pan fry them with a little bit of oil till slightly brown. They are a really good crunchy snack! No need to peel them, they’re fine as is. Harvesting around 60kg of pumpkins this year means we get plenty of pre dinner snacks!
Jason I have never hulled my pumpkin seeds either when roasting them in the oven. Generally I put them on a tray after having cooked something else and just let the residual heat bake them. As for pepitas, they are from a specific kind of pumpkin I believe.
Diane Moschella I make similar but I use dukkah seasoning instead as there are many different dukkah mixes to suit every taste – enjoy them with wine/beer instead of nuts etc. They only take a short time in the oven to puff up.
Diane Moschella Growing Pumpkins in the orchard a bit out of sight and with supposedly hungry possums, bush rats etc, we wrapped all the pumpkins in rags and only lost a few that we forgot to wrap.
You need quite a bit of room to grow them and when they start to grow, you need to pinch out the tips of the runners when they are about 3 mtrs to stimulate the growth of side shoots. If you don’t pinch out the tips, you’ll usually get all male flowers. Female flowers are identified by a swelling behind the flower. If they are not being pollinated by bees, you will need to pollinate them.