Operation 501

You hold a pumpkin seed in your hand and hope that it is the "magic" seed that is going to sprout, grow, and turn into a champion.  You imagine your reaction when the digital scale settles on that number which will make you the Pumpkin King.  It's all about the seed ... and the soil ... and the water ... and the time you've spent growing your Calabaza Gigante.

Weather is a factor that certainly works against Arizona growers wishing to grow Giant Pumpkins. We've been told for years that we shouldn't grow pumpkins. This year, the one weigh-in, which is held each fall in Gilbert (Mother Nature's Farm) only had two pumpkins. While they certainly were larger than the field pumpkins also displayed at the farm, they didn't begin to rival the Arizona record.

A review of Arizona's average daily high and low temperatures leads me to believe that growing pumpkins is best done in the first half of the calendar year. Sadly, there is limited interest in growing pumpkins for Memorial Day, or for the Fourth of July. Still, if we believe that size is everything, then we, as gardeners/growers, must change our thinking and plant our pumpkins as soon after New Year's Day as possible.  Arizona's temperatures are more like the weather in traditional pumpkin states when we compare our January through May to their May to September. We do our starts in December. They do their starts in April.

I recognize that our last frost day is the end of February, but in order to get a full 120-150 days for the pumpkin, we need to start finding ways to keep the early plants warm - just like everybody else must do in the traditional pumpkin belt (think hoop houses).  We're already on the best side of that deal.  We don't have to shovel our way to our plots. Our challenge at the end of the season is to keep our plants cool (think shade cloth). The northern pumpkin states are worried - again - about the cold.

Growing giant pumpkins is a time consuming, and sometimes frustrating hobby. Gordon Thomson, the 1989 World Record holder from Hemmingford, QC, once said, "All you need is good seed, good soil, good weather, and good luck." Yes, and you better be willing to spend your free time building shelters, improving irrigation systems, and reading about soil agronomy, water management, and seed genetics. You also better have a spouse with a sense of humor because they have to tolerate all of your babble about this stuff for which you aren't getting paid. (That's why they call it a hobby.)

Growing giant pumpkins has been a hobby for more than 160 years. The first recorded case of an American giant pumpkin hobbiest is Henry David Thoreau, who grew a 123.5 pound pumpkin back in 1857. From there, the hobby muddled along until 1900 when William Warnock displayed a 400 pound pumpkin at the Paris World's Fair. Then things went dormant while the world overcame the Great Depression - sandwiched between the fighting of a couple of World Wars.

It wasn't until 1976, when Howard Dill (Windsor, NS) developed the Dill Atlantic Giant Pumpkin seed, that things began to get interesting. The Dill seed is credited with creating the modern version of our giant pumpkin obsession. The pumpkins awesome growth increases for the past 38 years stems from the genetics found by Dill.
Many of the growing techniques, that we take for granted, were developed by championship growers in the 1980's and have been adopted by every successful grower since.  As a result, record weights continue to be obtained, each year, by part-time gardeners/growers who are pleased when a truck with 20 yards of finished compost arrives and they know they're going to be spreading all that material onto their plots - a lot of it with a shovel.

Today, Beni Meier of Pfungen, Switzerland is the World Record holder for growing pumpkins. Meier's pumpkin weighed in at 2,323.7 pounds. In addition to his World Record monster at the European Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off held in Germany, Meier brought a 2102.0 and a 2096.6 pounder at two other weigh-ins in 2014.  All of those beat last years World Record of 2,032 pounds grown by Tim Mathison of Napa, CA. 

John Hawkley, of Napa, CA, set a new North American record, this fall, by beating Mathison's record with a 2,058 pounder at the Safeway World Championships in Half Moon Bay, CA.  However, Hawkley, will have to settle for the North American Champion title until he, or somebody, figures out how to out-Beni Meier. 

Ben Bushieb grew his pumpkin in 2007. Scott Culp grew a 454 pounder in 2003. There may be a couple of 300 pounders somewhere - but they're unrecorded.

The reason we've created the Arizona Giant Pumpkin Growers is to introduce individual pumpkin growers to others interested in cultivating giant pumpkins. We believe there is a small group of gardeners/growers ready to take the next step and grow BIG Pumpkins in Arizona. We also believe by creating a resource for new pumpkin growers - as well as experienced pumpkin growers - that collectively we will all be more successful. The AZGPG can serve to provide a means of sharing information which can benefit all gardeners/growers interested in our hobby.

Bushieb and Culp both had to go it alone. They got help from a number of interested hobbiest from other states via BigPumpkin.com; but there wasn't any local help that could assist them build a shelter, inspect plants for diseases or insects, or identify other unrecognized problems. They couldn't even call a grower with whom to have a cup of coffee.

Hopefully, we can change that environment. We're a small group - right now. We want to grow BIG Pumpkins in Arizona. We're not ready to join the "real" big hitters (Boy! That target moved over the last 10 years.) But we do believe we can clear 500 pounds. Thus 2015 is being declared "Operation 501". We want a new record for Arizona.


Originally posted on the AZGPG website by:
Dean Baker,  November 18, 2014