The garden center was abuzz with hay rides, food trucks and kids games on a sunny Saturday. But the stars of the show at a Mount Vernon nursery in late September were 14 mind-bogglingly large pumpkins, drooping over the wooden pallets they rested on.
Pumpkin growers, families and community members descended on Christianson's Nursery for the Skagit Valley Giant Pumpkin Festival. Parents told their kids "those are real pumpkins!" and took photos as toddlers hugged fruits that dwarfed them.
Growers came from Lynden to Oregon City, Whidbey Island to Omak, for their shot at glory and a $2,000 grand prize for the heaviest pumpkin. The Washington state record is 2,363 pounds — equivalent to the weight of two full-grown horses.
The weigh-off was the first of the season organized by the Pacific Northwest Giant Pumpkin Growers. Since 1996, the group has been a place for giant pumpkin aficionados to share knowledge, swap seeds and meet others with a common goal: growing the largest possible pumpkins.
Growing a giant pumpkin takes an equally giant time commitment, growers said. They spend hours in the patch for months, pruning vines, weeding, watering and caring for the fruit to get it as big as possible.
Why put in so much effort for something that's vulnerable to the elements, isn't good for baking, and might just end up being fed to livestock?
"Fame and glory," Joe Baird, a grower from Seattle, said. "It's not a big pumpkin until somebody looks at it."
How to grow a giant pumpkin
Growing a giant pumpkin starts with specific seeds. Howard Dill, a Canadian pumpkin grower known as "the father of giant pumpkin growing," patented the modern Atlantic Giant variety in 1979. He set a 1980 world record with a 459-pound pumpkin.
Pumpkin sizes have skyrocketed since then, as growers advance technique, use different fertilizers and continue breeding seeds. The world record keeps being broken and currently stands at 2,749 pounds. Any year now, Pacific Northwest Giant Pumpkin Growers president Geoff Gould expects someone to crack 3,000 pounds.
Awards at weigh-offs are still named after Dill, recognizing the prettiest, shiniest, orangest pumpkin. At the Skagit Valley festival, the honor went to Sam Stoner, a first-time grower from Bellingham whose pumpkin weighed in at 986.5 pounds.
The quest for a giant pumpkin starts in the fall, when growers use organic material like leaves, fertilizer and cover crops to add nutrients to their soil. In the spring, they test the soil to ensure the pH and other chemical levels are optimal for growing.
Next, it's time to plant the seeds, usually in late March to early April. Giant pumpkin seeds have to germinate in a controlled indoor setting, ideally between 80 and 90 degrees. After 10 to 21 days, growers transplant the seeds outside.
The plant needs natural daylight to grow, but also must be kept warm and protected from the wind. Greenhouses are commonly used by European growers, but most in the Northwest don't use them, Gould said.
Once the plant is growing, growers spend time pruning, weeding and training the vines. By late June or early July, growers pollinate the blooms by hand, choosing the plants with ideal characteristics to control the offspring. Pollinating during heat waves changes the pumpkin's natural growing cycle, Gould has found in recent years; the pumpkin will grow quickly for a month and then completely stop.
When the fruit starts growing, that adds more maintenance to the to-do list. Growers usually grow only one pumpkin on each vine to maximize its growth, and most use a mat to keep the pumpkin from direct contact with the dirt. Sheets or structures with PVC pipes and tarps help keep sun and rain off the fruit as it grows.
At their peak, giant pumpkins can put on 50 pounds per day.
At the end of the growing season, it's time to enter the pumpkins in weigh-offs. Growers use machinery to lift the pumpkin off the ground and slide a wooden pallet underneath, then transport it to the back of a truck or a trailer.
"We pretty much have no life for six months," Gould, who lives in Kirkland and commutes to his pumpkin patch in Skagit Valley a few times per week, said. "Growers are weird that way."
Intense competition
An hour and a half into the weigh-off, only the four largest pumpkins remained. The crowd was locked in as emcee Lee Roof introduced the growers and read off each pumpkin's estimated weight, a proxy based on three measurements taken before the weigh-off.
The pumpkins are weighed smallest to largest to build suspense, but the estimated weight isn't always an accurate predictor. Pumpkins that have rough "cantalouped" skin and flat bottoms, or sound solid when you thump them, tend to be denser inside, making them heavier.
Harvey Cardwell grew the third-largest pumpkin, and the first in the contest to crack 1,000 pounds. He drove from Oregon City, south of Portland, to Mount Vernon to enter his pumpkin, along with a marrow squash, bushel gourd, tomato and a long gourd that measured more than 11 feet.
He's grown things his whole life, but last year was his first time entering a weigh-off. He won, which was "the most unreal experience," he said. This year, his pumpkin weighed in at 1,096.5 pounds, placing third.
It was time to weigh the final two pumpkins. Roof's pumpkin was the second-largest by measurements and weighed in at a whopping 1,548.5 pounds, 6% heavier than its measurements had estimated.
Last up was a pumpkin from Joel Holland of Sumner, a former world-record holder who holds Washington state's record. His pumpkin had measured the largest, with an estimated weight of 1,607 pounds.
The forklift gently eased the pumpkin onto the scale.
The officials behind the scale checked the reading.
The crowd held its breath.
The scale's display lit up: 1,351 pounds.
Holland's pumpkin had come in lighter than expected. Roof was the winner.
"It's fun and rewarding. It's an amazing amount of work," Roof, the vice president of the Pacific Northwest Giant Pumpkin Growers, said after the win. He won the same weigh-off in 2019 with a pumpkin just half a pound away from this year's winner. He has one other pumpkin growing this year, and plans to enter it at a weigh-off on Camano Island in mid-October.
He grew his first giant pumpkin for his kids 30 years ago after seeing a seed packet at a hardware store. He's been growing on Whidbey Island ever since.
If new growers are interested, they should join the growers' association to meet people, get free seeds and learn from others, he said.
"If someone's interested, you can have a blast and grow a 300-pound pumpkin easily," Roof said. "But I have to warn people, it can be addicting."
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