Rumor has it there’s a giant among giant pumpkins — a 1,600-pounder — growing in Don Young’s Iowa garden.
“That’s the place to be from if you want to break the world record (of 1,502 pounds) this year,” says Ken Mitchell, a 13-year giant-pumpkin grower from Elk Grove, Calif., “because the weather patterns have been just right for giant pumpkins back there. The pumpkin is already estimated at 1,600 pounds. Of course, there’s a margin of error. Whether or not it makes it another two or three weeks (until the contests begin), well, a lot can happen.”
Mitchell knows what he’s talking about. He’s had great success and great failures pursuing the giant pumpkin. His personal best weighed 922 pounds. This year, however, two pumpkins hovering around 800 pounds blew up. Those were his words exactly: They blew up. He still has a big one or two in the patch, but probably no state or world record-holder this year.
Frustrated and weary from tending 16 mammoth pumpkin vines in his 13,000-square-foot patch, Mitchell wonders whether he’ll grow giant pumpkins next year. Sixteen plants were too many to tend this season, he said.
He asks himself whether it was any fun. But then he talks about the friends he’s met all over the country growing giant pumpkins as well as the camaraderie and joy of taking a pumpkin to a contest and talking to other growers.
“Suddenly you’re planning next year’s patch, and even though 16 plants were too many this year, you’re planning on planting 20 next year,” he says. “So will I grow giant pumpkins next year? Hopefully. Yeah, I guess I will. It’s like an addiction.”
Giant-pumpkin grower Brian Myers of Wilton, Calif., calls the pursuit of a world-record-breaking giant pumpkin the “Jack and the Beanstalk complex.”
“You take this tiny seed and watch it grow into a monster pumpkin,” he says. “You’re the maestro of your garden, bringing together soil, fertilizer, moisture, and you’re trying to choreograph that whole scenario over the course of four or five months to create this giant, awesome pumpkin that people look at and say, ‘Wow, that’s incredible. How did you do it?’”
Myers adds, “Some guys will pay $250 or $300 for a single seed. There’s no guarantee the seed will germinate, but that shows you the dedication of some growers.”
Buying the best soil and compost, erecting elaborate shade structures, installing computerized watering systems, researching fertilizers, devising the perfect watering and fertilizing schedule, spending hours digging trenches and burying vines are just a few of the extraordinary lengths growers try.
They also study macronutrients and micronutrients. They shade the pumpkins from the hot, blistering sun. They avoid applying pesticides that could damage or mar the pumpkin’s skin. They are constantly on the lookout for mice or rabbits or gophers.
Mitchell has a friend who moved three times and took the pumpkin patch soil along. The explanation? “You spend years building up your soil, maybe decades,” he says.
Napa, Calif., giant-pumpkin grower Pete Glasier earned the nickname “the tumbleweed” because he kept moving around the western United States looking for the perfect giant pumpkin growing climate. Glasier and his wife Cindi have lived and grown giant pumpkins in Colorado, Oregon, Washington and California.
The Glasiers’ largest pumpkin to date weighed 1,195 pounds.
Sue Sheridan of Sloughhouse, Calif., installed shade cloth and a misting system over her pumpkin patch this year. “Unfortunately, we had problems with aphids and bugs.”
Her biggest so far weighed 423 pounds. Her goal is to grow a 700-pound pumpkin.
“It’s in my blood, I guess,” says Jon Hunt of Elk Grove. Hunt grew a California-record-breaking 991-pound pumpkin in 1999. “Maybe it feeds our ego. You get a big pumpkin and you want to be No. 1.”
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