HArdlyrob, I'm afraid your pumpkin just ain't gonna cut it

[Bruce K]

There was an article in The Boston Globe today with a picture of a farmer growing what he hopes to be a world record pumpkin down in southeast Massachusetts.

Apparently this giant is putting on about 11 pounds per day and will be harvested the end of next week for a fiar in Rhode Island.

The hope is that this beast will weigh in excess of 1 TON !!!

Now if THAT'S not the Great Pumpkin I don't know what is.

BK

PS: Rob, we still need pictures. :banana:

[girlie]

Apparently this giant is putting on about 11 pounds per day and will be harvested the end of next week for a fiar in Rhode Island.

Now if THAT'S not the Great Pumpkin I don't know what is.


William!
Rhode Island....it's happening.
girlie

[William]

William!
Rhode Island....it's happening.
girlie


Got my security blanket and beverages...who's coming!! :)



William

[johnnymossville]

Get Pictures!!! and stand by it for perspective.

over a ton --- *whistles through teeth and imagines the beast.

[Bruce K]

From today's Boston.com site..... 1800+ and counting !!!!

:eek: :eek: :eek:

BK

[Dekonick]

I would hate to see the mess after the neighborhood hooligans smash it...

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . how these people get these pumpkins to grow so big? I mean, it just ain't natural . . .

Pumpkin EPO?

BBD

[Louis]

. . . how these people get these pumpkins to grow so big? I mean, it just ain't natural . . .

Ask the girls on Baywatch...

[girlie]

. . . how these people get these pumpkins to grow so big? I mean, it just ain't natural . . .

Pumpkin EPO?

BBD

I kept telling Rob to inject his pumpkin with water.
Was that wrong.
girlie

[Bruce K]

The arcitlce stated this guy used a home made concoction that include dried blood and other strange stuff.

Kind of reminds me of something....

BK

[Bill Bove]

Audrey? Now that is funny. I once left a tub of E.R.G. (Gookinaid) remember that stuff? on the kitchen table, my Dad mistook it for my brother-in-laws special fertilizer and used it on his tomato plants. He won the naighborhood tomato derby that year (plant on Memorial Day, look for fruit in July) with big, fat ripe ones well before the 4th.

[Bruce K]

Bill;

You are such a well rounded individual. ;)

I was wondering who would remember the Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors.

Feed me Krelborn!!! :eek:

BK

[capybaras]

Whoa :eek: That is one corn-fed pumpkin :banana:

[johnnymossville]

Someone once told me they feed these giants Milk too. Wonder if that's in this guy's concoction?

[capybaras]

"For five months, he has slaked its thirst with a garden hose, shaded it from the sun with a cotton sheet, kept off the rain with a plastic tarp. He regularly fed it an exotic recipe of ground bone, blood, fish, molasses, and cow and chicken manure." :eek:


http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/10/03/pumped_up/

[Bill Bove]

ain't gonna eat any of pies made outa that pumpkin :eek:

[Hardlyrob]

Here are the pics of Binky's competition and the end of his day...

[Hardlyrob]

. . . how these people get these pumpkins to grow so big? I mean, it just ain't natural . . .

Pumpkin EPO?

BBD

Dave (and Girlie) - no syringes involved, just good genetics. Google Dill's Atlantic Giant.

Howard Dill - the progenitor of this variety of giant vegetables was at the weigh off yesterday - really nice guy. He came up with this variety because he was curious, and was playing around crossing pumpkins for the largest size he could grow. He had no idea it would turn into a "sport".

Apparently calcium availability is really important to get them to grow that fast - hence the scary ingredients like bone meal, dried blood and chicken poo. It also explains why milk was important in the past.


Cheers!

Rob

[Karin Kirk]

Apparently calcium availability is really important to get them to grow that fast - hence the scary ingredients like bone meal, dried blood and chicken poo. It also explains why milk was important in the past.


I wouldn't consider those to be "scary" ingredients. They are very common forms of organic nutrients that have been long-used in the tradition of returning things to the earth and continuing the cycle of life and nutrients. I use all of those items and to me they are far less scary than a bottle of magical chemical fertilizers.

That aside, I think those huge pumpkins are impressive and it looks like fun to nurture a big one like that. Do you know which one won and how much it weighed? It looked like others might have been larger.

Thanks for sharing the cool pics and story! :)

[Hardlyrob]

Karin - the third to last picture is of the winner - the long one with all the folks standing around the scale. 1464 pounds - second heaviest in the US so far this year, but WAY under last years world record at the same weigh off of 1689 pounds.

Size and weight don't seem to go together well - all the "tall" ones came in at 1100 to 1200 pounds - the biggest wasn't the heaviest. In weigh off parlance, as we learned yesterday "they weighed light" - which makes no sense. Another oddity are the tall green things in the background - "long gourds" some get over 10 feet tall. You need a big trellis to grow them.

Yup, organic nutrients are a great way to get the mineral balance right. Bone meal and dried blood have indeed been used for centuries, but sound scary to the non-gardener.

I was COMPLETELY lazy to get the 335.5 pounder named Binky. I planted a giant pumpkin plant we bought at a farmer's market about May 15th on top of our compost pile, and didn't do another thing to it except take the other pumpkins off the vines. I may have watered it once early on so the plant didn't die.

If you want some seeds to try your own, I have plenty. Keep in mind these things need a LOT of space. Mine covered roughly 5000 (yes thousand) square feet with vines. Also, as we learned, smart growers grow the selected pumpkin ON the pallet, vs, moving it to a pallet as we did yesterday - Doh!

Cheers!

Rob

[Hardlyrob]

This one's for BBDave - don't know what these growers were feeding them to get them to glow like this...

[Karin Kirk]

Oh wait, I didn't realize this was your own pumpkin! (I got confused by the one profiled earlier in the thread.) Wow, what a fun gardening adventure you've had.

That's crazy that you grew a 300+ lb pumpkin! It sure must have been fun to see all the other competitors and watch them being weighed and hear all the buzz about this year's crop. No doubt they have a giant pumpkin forum or society or something like that where they all know each other.

Are they all the same variety? Some look a little different. But they all have that oozy look that huge pumpkins get when they can't support their own weight. Very cool.

I would love to try it except that our growing season is too short for most pumpkins. They are one of Dave's favorite crops so I always plant some, but we use the short-season types. We got a good haul of 7 jack-o-lantern size pumpkins this year. Dave enjoys applying his lug-carving skills and whacky creativity to his pumpkins. But yeah, if we lived in a warmer place I would love to try growing a giant one.

Thanks for the story and pics!

[Hardlyrob]

Yup Binky is / was mine. This all started when we used my house as the mid-point stop on the Tour du Bivalve a couple of weeks ago. The other forumites seemed fascinated by the concept of giant pumpkins, and interested / horrified at Binky. Girlie, being the ex racer, wanted to shoot Binky up (with water) to win.

The ride thread quickly devolved into mud-slinging about true believers and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. I think William and Girlie have a date, but I'm not sure.

Yes they are all the same variety - Dill's Atlantic Giant. They take several forms, and the color is more related to how much sun they see. Lots of growers shade the pumpkin so it won't mature and stop growing - hence the white or pale yellow ones. Additionally, the seeds used are referenced to the pumpkin they came from - so you get entries like "Jutras 1689 08 x Dwelly 1502 06" which is the grower, the final weight of the pumpkin, and the year.

Cheers!

Rob

[capybaras]

You and your pumpkin are cool :beer:

[39cross]

...The ride thread quickly devolved into mud-slinging about true believers and waiting for the Great Pumpkin....No, no, no, that wasn't mud, it was an act of love pure and simple.

We were disappointed not to see your pumpkin among the gargantuans at the fair. Who'd have thought, after seeing her, that Binky was on the petite side?

[William]

...The ride thread quickly devolved into mud-slinging about true believers and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. I think William and Girlie have a date, but I'm not sure....


Rob

Like Rick said, Just love and admiration for the Great Pumkin. And if you hear any noises in your pumpkin patch Halloween night, that's just Girlie and I toasting the Great Pumpkin. :)




RIP Binky!



William

[39cross]

Pumpkins gone wild: