A section of UF’s campus will be colored with Florida-grown orange pumpkins, yellow squashes and striped gourds from today until Friday.
The UF Horticultural Sciences Graduate Student Club will have about 200 pumpkins and other gourds for sale from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day at Fifield Hall on Hull Road.
“We will have all kinds of pumpkins, from edibles to carving to decorative,” said Gerardo Nunez, the graduate representative for the club.
The 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate in horticultural sciences said the proceeds will help club members travel around the world to present their research.
He said the UF North Florida Research and Education Center and the UF Partnership for Water, Agriculture and Community donated the pumpkins. The sale is the club’s biggest Fall fundraiser.
Nunez said buying from fellow students and knowing the funds support research are incentives to purchase pumpkins on campus.
“We would like people to come and meet the kind of folks that are growing the food we eat,” he said.
Plus, Nunez said, the price is right.
“We always price the pumpkins lower than the stores,” he said. “All of these pumpkins have been grown by people from UF and in the state. That is something you won’t find if you buy your pumpkins from a large supermarket.”
Tessa Keskinen, a 20-year-old environmental science and sustainability studies junior, said she wants to support the students.
“I think that doing a seasonal fundraiser is a pretty cool thing,” she said.
