A pick your own pumpkins farm had to close early after selling out before Halloween.

PYO Pumpkins, based at Beluncle Farm in Hoo, was inundated with visitors over the weekend eager to pull on their wellies and choose their favourite fruit from the rows upon rows on offer.

Some had travelled from London after reading about the farm in a national newspaper.

By lunchtime on Sunday there were no pumpkins left and the farm had to shut its doors four days earlier than planned.

Farmer Verity Batchelor said: “We had nine very successful days before we sold out.

"We had an unbelievable surge of pumpkin pickers on Sunday morning. We had people panic parking in the road – there was plenty of room for parking in our farmyard but I think people saw the queue to get in and chose to park outside.

“We sold out last year and this year we planted three times as many pumpkins but we still sold out.”

The Batchelor family has been running PYO Pumpkins since 2010, raising money for charities which support Crohn’s sufferers because son Luke, now 13, has the disease.

As well as selling the pumpkins they grow, the family raise money by making pumpkin soup, cake and chutney and hope to encourage people to make their own when they carve their pumpkins at home.

This year the donations from the food sales raised £1,200 which will be divided between Crohn’s and Colitis UK and Crohn’s in Childhood Research Association.

Both charities will also receive a further £1,500 donation from the sale of the pumpkins.

Verity said: “We have already started planning for next year, that started on Sunday night. We are expecting even more people in 2015.”