Guest post by Beate Schwirtlich
A round this time each year huge pumpkins, some as big as a thousand pounds, are loaded–using either a forklift or a bunch of strong people and a tarp–into vans and trucks and taken to contests. Growers have spent months tending to these pumpkins that by now have become lumpy, flattened-by-their-own-unnatural-mass giants. This years’ heavyweight pumpkin of 1140 pounds was grown by Dave Stelts, and weighed in at Canfield, Ohio. Nine pumpkins grown this year joined “club 1000” (the informal name for growers who have “broken the barrier”), a record in itself. In the eighties, the heaviest pumpkin weighed in at just over 400 pounds-now a pumpkin over 1000 pounds is expected each year.
A guy named Howard Dill gets most of the credit for the size of pumpkin being grown today. He’s a Nova Scotia farmer who started growing pumpkins in the fifties and spent 30 years breeding them for size. He held the world record from 1979 to 1982. Today, he sells his own variety of seeds, Dill’s Atlantic Giant, by mail order. Pumpkins grown from his seeds are known to grow into the biggest pumpkins of any.
It’s supposed to be a hobby, but competition for first prize weigh-off contests is serious. The people who really want to win are always trying to concoct ways of giving their pumpkin the advantage-a special fertilizer mix, a certain way of a training the vines, a custom greenhouse… If it’s not money on the line, it’s skill and pride. One contest, held by the World Pumpkin Confederation, offers a $50 000 first prize, far more than any other. But there’s still cache in growing the biggest pumpkin, even if it’s not for the big dough. Other growers respect the skill of winners: they go to them for seeds and advice, and follow their methods of growing (if they are willing to share them) religiously. Howard Dill for example is actually described as the `guru’ of big pumpkins by other growers. Some even protect their prize pumpkins with elaborate security systems.
The people who are best at growing pumpkins muster all their human ingenuity and gardening know-how to give nature a winning push. A prize pumpkin doesn’t have to be pretty, edible, or even non-toxic. It just has to weigh a ton. The plants are monitored, measured, and treated scientifically but are at the same time coddled and even loved. They are fertilized according to a program, and liberally treated with fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and anything else in the arsenal of old-fashioned, chemical-heavy style gardening—even before the grower notices a problem! These gourds are not bred to be pest resistant, that’s for sure. A site called The Pumpkin Nook pretty much expresses the feeling growers have towards the use of pesticides:
” If you are in search of the behemoth pumpkin, spraying to control insects is unfortunately a must…Fortunately those striving for prize winning pumpkins will not be eating the fruit, so health risks are lower. “
Theoretically, though, one fruit could supply the pumpkin for 900 pies. In “Training and Pruning your Pumpkin Vines” David McCallum tells a story of sacrifice in the quest to keep a giant squash safe from the weather:
” The squash was kept growing in the greenhouse with the aid of a propane furnace until November 4. The greenhouse even made it through a 4″ wet snowfall. By setting the alarm clock and getting up every four hours, my brother and I were able to keep the roof clean all night long. “
No wonder pumpkin growers describe their hobby as a sport-and he’s probably not the first to miss a good nights’ sleep over his pumpkin. One grower describes the nerves that accompany the late season, when the pumpkin is getting huge, as the time to start taking nerve pills. It seems the stress is incredible; the pumpkins grow 15 to 20 pounds a day, a rate of growth that can cause them to split without any warning, the growers’ worst fear.
Less earnest accounts tell of increasing the heft of pumpkins by injecting them with growth hormones (the story I’d heard about feeding pumpkins milk turns out to be a myth), filling the hollow with water the night before the weigh-off, patching up cracks with silicone and disguising signs of rot. But if the rules for pumpkin weigh-offs are to be followed, they mostly use every trick in the gardening book, many of them extravagant.
I always thought that this was an innocent hobby. It’s actually rather cutthroat and involves a lot of fertilizer and water in the name of being number one. If you ask me, it’s more a human accomplishment that happens to involve a plant. Here are some tips of the pumpkin growing superstars, things that may seem a bit odd to the uninitiated. If you ask me, only true pumpkin maniacs would go so far in pursuit of a giant, unedible vegetable.
- Soil is most important. Most how-to articles recommend digging a pit five foot square and three feet deep (!) and filling it with a mixture of sheep, chicken, horse and cattle manure and leaf litter all mixed together with topsoil.
- Before germination, seeds are put in water and aerated with a fish tank bubbler “to introduce lots of oxygen into the water and to the seeds”.
- “Avoid touching the fruit with your bare hands…Wear clean gloves if you must,” writes one grower. Apparently pumpkins can suffer viral problems if actually touched.
- Growers keep diaries of daily measurements and progress of their plants
- Dowsers are sometimes hired to find a source of underground water. Growing pumpkins get as much as a thousand gallons of water a day.
- “Pumpkin cabanas” shade the actual fruit during mid-summer, while elaborate windbreaks protect them from the wind.
- Special heating units are dug into the soil before transplanting outside, so that the soil can be heated from below and above.
- One grower suggests treating transplants like newborn babies.
- Avoid soil compaction in the pumpkin patch: “Wear snowshoes if you must.”
I’ve realized that I don’t have the right personality type for this hobby. I’m not meticulous enough, I don’t own a pick-up truck to cart the thing around, and I think I’d rather have a messy pumpkin patch with lots of small happy little pumpkins for making into pie. Is there a contest for the happiest pumpkin patch?
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There are a variety of reasons for harvesting your own seeds; some personal, some environmental. Perhaps you have a variety that you like and you are concerned that seed companies may discontinue stocking it. You saw some wildflowers while on an outdoor hike that you’d like to grow in your own garden. You have a heritage variety and you want to continue growing it in future years. You want to trade some of your seeds with some of a friend’s seeds, you want to grow organic seeds, or maybe you just want to save money and avoid buying new annuals next year. Whatever the reason, you don’t need to be a botanist or a farmer to do it. If you can grow plants, you can produce your own seeds. There are however, a few things you may want to know before you get started.
Plants either have all the parts to pollinate themselves, (called self-pollinators) or they are aided in accomplishing this by insects, the wind, or human intervention (cross-pollinators). Self-pollinators are commonly referred to as ‘perfect flowers’ as they contain all the parts to successfully pollinate themselves. The comparatively imperfect cross-pollinators produce all the parts to pollinate, but not all in one place. Parts are divided between blooms or are ‘self-incompatible’, identifying their own pollen as foreign material. Pollen must find its way from one plant to the next. This method is preferable for the survival of the species because it ensures that the plants produce genetically diverse seeds– seeds that contain different genetic information or traits then the original plant. This enables the plant to better adapt itself to the environment it is in, or acquire traits that will help it become more disease resistant. Self-pollinators on the other hand, essentially produce clones, which makes them more susceptible to any problems that may arise.
Open Pollenated, Heirloom, and Hybrid
Before long a seedpod will replace the spent flower. Don’t remove the seed head right away: leave it on the stems as long as possible, letting it ripen within the pod. Seeds are generally ready when the pod turns brown, dries out or cracks open. If you notice that the seed pod is prone to cracking open on it’s own (snapdragons, violas, pansies), attach a lunch-sized paper bag around it using an elastic or string, catching the seeds as they fall. When the seeds are fully ripe, cut the stem at the base of the plant and shake the seed head inside the bag to dislodge the seeds from the casing. If some seeds are lost to the soil they will come up on their own next year. This is called self-seeding, and many annuals reproduce themselves this way.
If the seed heads are not fully dry and ripe when you cut them off, either hang the stems (with the seed cases) or lay them flat to dry on a newspaper or paper towel pad away from direct light. Make sure that all seeds are completely dry before removing them from the pods: if you package them before they are fully dry they will go moldy in storage. This is the simplest way; it’s easier to dry the whole seed head then a bunch of loose seeds. When the pod is dry, extract the seeds by carefully crushing or breaking open the seedpods. Separate crushed debris from the seeds by sifting everything through a fine mesh screen. The debris will fall through and the seeds will remain on top of the screen. Some seeds such as those from marigolds or black-eyed susans can simply be pulled from the seed head.
Seeds from fruits and vegetables should be collected when plants are at their peak, before they are over-ripe and decay has set in. Some vegetables such as beans are the exception and should be harvested when the pods are dry. Seeds from most fruits and vegetables are incased inside a wet environment (the part usually eaten). In the case of very wet pulp such as tomatoes, the seeds can be washed from the pulp and then laid out to dry on newspaper or a screen. The same can be done with pumpkins, squash and other soft pulp vegetables. In the case of harder pulp fruits and vegetables they are simply opened up and the seeds removed manually.
Storing Seeds
Store seeds carefully by placing envelopes inside large glass jars with a bag of silica or powdered milk. These products absorb excess moisture. Reuse the tiny bags of silica gel that come inside new shoes–dry them for a few minutes at a very low temperature in your oven. Alternatively, make a tiny package of powdered milk by pouring a pile into the centre of a piece of breathable fabric or tissue paper. Pull the corners together and close it up with a piece of string or elastic to create a sachet. The best jars for storage are wide mouth mason jars used for canning. They have the proper airtight seal that is essential for long term storage. If you store the jars in a cool, dark place the seeds should last from a year to a few years, depending on the type.
