The Great Pumpkin: Backyard Botanists Shoot for 1-Ton Mark

The Great Pumpkin:
Backyard Botanists
Shoot for 1-Ton Mark

 

Latest Garden Sport Bends
Scales, Rules of Nature;
Gaining 40 Pounds a Day
By SUSAN WARREN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 29, 2005; Page A1

 

WARWICK, R.I. -- After six months of tender ministrations to the hulking orange blob in his backyard garden, Richard Wallace arrived at the moment of truth earlier this month.

 

It was time to harvest his giant pumpkin and take it to the official weigh-off, where growers each year compete for bragging rights to the hugest pumpkin in the land. As the harness straps strained to lift his pumpkin off the ground, the weight-gauge on the winch rose past 1,100 pounds. Then, there was a dull crack and the bottom gave way. Out glugged a sickening sludge of fermenting pumpkin guts, filling the air with the stench of rotten fruit.

 

The rest of the pumpkin harvesters gagged, but Mr. Wallace shrugged off the demise of his gargantuan garden specimen with a wry smile. "If you can't handle defeat, this isn't the hobby for you," the 64-year-old retired manager said.

 

Shelley and Scott Palmer with their 1,443-pound pumpkin, winner of a recent weigh-off in Warren, R.I.
 
Producing the biggest and best fruit and vegetables has long been a staple of county fairs, but in recent years growing giant pumpkins has evolved into a fiercely competitive garden sport. Fanatical growers carve out half of the calendar year to devote to their pumpkin patches, working to bend the rules of Mother Nature by nurturing their monsters with thousands of gallons of water, stinky soups of manure and seaweed, and complex pruning techniques.

 

Vacations are postponed and marriages strained as growers spend up to 30 hours a week tending their pumpkins during the summer's peak growing time, when giants have been known to gain 40 pounds a day. "He spent so many nights out there," says Shelley Palmer of her pumpkin-obsessed husband, Scott. "Sometimes I think he was out there sitting in a chair just talking to it."

 

Such dedication produces pumpkins that can measure 15 feet to 16 feet around. Twenty years ago, a 500-pound pumpkin was considered a monumental feat. Now, giants regularly tip the scales at 1,200 pounds to 1,400 pounds, bringing within sight the previously incomprehensible: a 1-ton pumpkin.

 

Howard Dill, a farmer in Nova Scotia, Canada, ushered in the age of the behemoths in the late 1970s by perfecting the genetics of a seed he patented as the Dill Atlantic Giant. Mr. Dill's seed gave anyone a shot at growing a jumbo, throwing open the door to backyard enthusiasts from California to Ohio to as far abroad as Australia. Growers in the northern half of the U.S. have the best success, because cooler summers extend the growing season through September, giving the pumpkins more time to reach their humongous size.

 

But it is weight, not size, that really counts. Growers estimate the weight of their pumpkins based on tape measurements. But every grower hopes for a pumpkin that will "go heavy" -- weighing more than its measurements suggest. "It all depends on what's inside the pumpkin. If the walls are thick, then it will weigh more," explains Raymond Leonzi, a financial analyst who set a Connecticut state record this year with the 1,081-pounder he grew in his Trumbull backyard.

 

Genetics are the key. Pumpkins crossed with squash can be pale, flat and ugly, but often outweigh their prettier and plumper bright-orange cousins. That's generated a debate among growers over which is more desirable to grow. Joseph Jutras, a longtime Rhode Island pumpkin enthusiast, grows both. He grieves over the demise this year of a hulking mixed-breed "squampkin" that was on track to break 1,500 pounds: It grew too fast and split open at 1,308 pounds. But he speaks most fondly of a 1,225-pound, pure-orange pumpkin he grew in 2003. "Now that was a great pumpkin," he recalls wistfully. "The shape of it was perfect: the stem, the blossom, the ridges, the sheen."

 

Like thoroughbred race horses, progeny of exceptionally heavy pumpkins are prized. Each winter online auctions are held where the hottest seeds can go for more than $500 apiece -- even though there's no guarantee they will sprout. Most successful growers work for years before breaking the 1,000-pound mark, and they guard their secrets closely. But tiny Rhode Island has been climbing the ranks of giant pumpkin growers with a different strategy: team work.

 

Mr. Wallace and his son, Ronald, who have been refining their growing techniques since the late 1980s, save rival newcomers years of trial and error by giving away prime seeds and teaching the basics of soil improvement, planting strategy and pruning.

 

The Rhode Island-based Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers club is part of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, a kind of world sporting authority for growers. Each year, the clubs compete at 25 weigh-offs in North American, and one in Ireland. This year, the Rhode Islanders are aiming for the highest average weight for their club's top 10 pumpkins.

 

Three days before the club's Oct. 10 weigh-off, a group of growers went from patch to patch, helping members load their giant pumpkins into the backs of pickup trucks. Each pumpkin received a critical review. At the first stop, Ronald Wallace circled Steven Sperry's mammoth entry silently. He leaned over and gave it a bear hug, pressed his ear to its mottled orange skin, then slapped it with his hands, testing for thickness.

 

The disintegration of his father's pumpkin later that day was costly, depriving the club of its second potential 1,300-pound entry. The previous day, Ronald had lost his own pumpkin to rot brought on by a fungal infection. "More things can go wrong than right," Ronald Wallace noted. "Just imagine if you were putting on 40 to 50 pounds a day."

 

By the end of the day, debate raged over which of the top two Rhode Island contenders was heavier: a pumpkin grown by Fred Macari, an electrical contractor who won the state's top prize last year, or one grown by Scott Palmer and his wife, Shelley. Mr. Macari's pumpkin was rounder and bigger, but several growers were betting on Mr. Palmer's flatter, but possibly denser, pumpkin.

 

Nerves were jittery as the pumpkins made the 20-mile journey to the weigh-off spot at a local farm. One by one, they were unloaded with a forklift and lined up in a field. Mr. Palmer's pumpkin was the last to be picked up. As the forklift backed away from the truck, its lift suddenly dropped with a jarring crunch to within inches of the ground. The growers froze in horror. When they saw the pumpkin was OK, they whooped jubilantly and slapped Mr. Palmer on the back. "You broke the truck!" shouted one.

 

At the weigh-off, Mr. Palmer's forklift-breaker took first place, setting a New England record at 1,443 pounds, just 26 pounds shy of the world record set earlier this year by a Pennsylvania grower. A Massachusetts pumpkin came in second at 1,333 pounds. Mr. Sperry's pumpkin, at 1,312 pounds, was heavier than expected, earning third place by just 1½ pounds over Mr. Macari's entry. The Rhode Islanders' top 10 averaged 1,174 pounds per pumpkin, topping the charts of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth.

 

Although his own prized pumpkin bit the dust, Richard Wallace helped run the weigh-off and took solace that many of the biggest were descendents of Wallace pumpkins, nurtured according to his tutoring. "I would have liked to have had my own pumpkin here, because I worked so hard," said Mr. Wallace, surveying the line of giants. "But there's a little bit of me in every one of those pumpkins."

 

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