LITTLE ROCK — The record for the world's largest pumpkin was about 460 pounds until 1981, when Howard Dill, a grower in Nova Scotia, Canada came up with one that was close to 500 pounds. He patented the seed, and growers around the world jumped to buy Dill's Atlantic Giant. As they crossed and re-crossed varieties, the pumpkins grew ever larger; by 1994, the symbol of Halloween had passed the 1,000-pound mark.
"Basically, they all came from the Atlantic Giant," Sue Jutras said, standing in the family's pumpkin patch in North Scituate, R.I., where her husband, Joe, grew the 1,689-pounder that broke the world record this year.
But he is not satisfied with that achievement. Beautiful orange pumpkins tend to be lighter, with thinner shells; it is their buff-colored, dense-fleshed cousins that usually break the records.
"Joe's trying to get the best of both," Jutras said. "An orange one that's heavy."
Joe Jutras' baby, the color of a Creamsicle, had toppled a 1,566-pound mammoth grown by Bill Rodonis, in Litchfield, N.H., which, only 25 minutes earlier, had broken the 2006 record set by a 1,502-pound giant grown by Ron Wallace in Greene, R.I.
"It was a bittersweet moment," said Rodonis, a farmer, of his fleeting victory. "But no one can take that away from me."
The weigh-off, at the Topsfield Fair in Topsfield, Mass., on Sept. 29, was one of dozens taking place around the country.
"I would think that 2,000 pounds is not out of the question anymore," said Joe Jutras, who was taking part in his local club's weigh-off a week later at Frerichs Farm in Warren, R.I.
Jutras had donated a 1,000-pound squash, just to be dropped from the air and smashed, to open the ceremonies. Forty-five pumpkins, from classic orange and buff to white, were lined up in a field surrounded by bleachers full of fans, with a bandstand, complete with rock band and pumpkin cheerleaders, with orange wigs, gyrating onstage.
Forklifts trundled each entry to a scale to be weighed, from the smallest orange 142-pound beauty to the thousand-pounders and up.
As they get bigger, these super-size vegetables take on the unfortunate appearance of terribly obese humans, stretched beyond the capacity of their skins. They can be lopsided, collapsed-looking, with flattened bottoms, as if unable to support their weight.
No matter. The bigger the better, in the giant pumpkin world.
"This might be the biggest crowd in the history of the pumpkin growers' weigh-off," Wallace, the club's president, said at the Warren weigh-off.
"For competitive people like myself, the scale is our accomplishment," he said.
Wallace said his biggest pumpkin of this year, a 1,470-pounder, is headed for the Late Show With David Letterman.
"I'm going to get the seeds out," Wallace said. "Then they'll pack it with dynamite and blow it up." (Last year's explosion on the Letterman show, viewable at thatvideosite.com/video/3555, is spectacular. In fact, this is something of a subculture; just search google.com for "explosion" and "pumpkins.") Last year, Wallace's record-breaker sold for $6,000 to Grand Central Terminal.
Jutras is waiting to see who bids the most for his recordbreaker, which already earned him $5,000 in prize money at Topsfield.
Wallace said, "The top carvers in the world will be battling out who gets to carve it."
But not before Jutras gets his seeds out. He and others will grow them to see if they can produce massive progeny once more.
"If it doesn't grow two or three substantial pumpkins, that seed will fall off the map," Wallace said. "If they get a handful of 1,500-, 1,600-pound pumpkins, that's hot seed stock."
FROM THE BEGINNING
In the winter, these local growers can be found in Jutras' woodworking shop, building mini-greenhouses for the pumpkin seedlings, which must be planted in early May in warm ground.
They start their seeds indoors, toward the end of April, in a sterile mix that has been inoculated with fungi, which set up a symbiotic relationship with plant rootlets, helping them to absorb nutrients and fend off any diseases as the pumpkin plant develops.
The plants go outside into the mini-greenhouses as soon as the baby plant's first true leaf appears. Once the main vine has grown to the edge of its greenhouse's wall, it's time to remove the protection of the house, although lightweight covers made out of spun plastic are usually ready at hand if nights turn cool.
Then comes the mad race to keep up with vines that can grow 3 feet a day, coursing over the 750 square feet of fertile loam ideally allocated to each plant. The vines are buried to encourage roots to grow, drawing more nutrients out of the soil to feed only a few favored fruits to ripen on the main stem.
Each pumpkin plant drinks 60 gallons of water a day. Growers love the kind of hot, dry season they just had - because they can control the water.
HomeStyle, Pages 48 on 10/27/2007