Pumpkin Story

July 20th 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the moon - I moved into a rental house on Hayes St after returning from Vietnam - my first giant pumpkins were gaining size in the front yard.  A few months earlier I had gone to the Pike Place Market looking for something unique to grow in the yard. Big Max Pumpkin seeds caught my eye - “Grow 100 pound pumpkins”. I purchased a package and two of the largest pots I could find, about 40 gallons each. The pumpkins grew well except in the late afternoon the leaves would start to wilt from lack of water. I worked nights as a waiter at the Old Spaghetti Factory so I was around in the afternoon to give them a second watering.

The plants produced two pumpkins close to 100 pounds each. They were the catalyst for the pumpkins I have been growing the last 36 years. However, it would be another 6 years before I grew pumpkins again. I moved to the University District to attend school. When I graduated I returned to Magnolia. A few of you may remember the little house directly behind where I live now.  With a large front yard it seemed like a great place to grow pumpkins again. The little house was located on the back of the lot with a small flower bed in front.  I planted two pumpkin plants there. They did well, each year I added more pumpkin plants until the entire yard was covered with pumpkins and flowers.

It was fun catching people off guard - they were not anticipating seeing giant pumpkins out of the corner of their eye as they walked or drove by.  They would do a double take of disbelief. At that time few people had seen giant pumpkins before.

My mail box had been moved to the front by the side walk; the postal supervisor told me my yard was too treacherous to maneuver through to deliver mail.  Due to a few late night problems, I placed a baby monitor in the back of the mail box - a pumpkin prowler warning system.  It worked well but I heard more than prowlers: voices of disbelief as the pumpkins caught them off guard. Back then the top three comments were:        1. Holy S***, # 2 Way Cool, #3 A little old Man must live here.  (They must have been seeing into the future.)

Being young it was easy to be excited about newspaper, TV and even Sunset Magazine stories about the pumpkins - motivating me to do more every year.  Many grade school classes and pre-school classes would visit the pumpkin patch. I delivered pumpkins to Magnolia Elementary, Catherine Blaine, Ronald McDonald house, Seattle Children’s Home and the Seattle Center. At the peak I had more 100 pumpkins carved and lit with candles on Halloween. I would build a scary Halloween tunnel leading to the from door with a strobe light bouncing off clouds from one hundred pounds of dry ice, making sure I had enough candy for more than the thousand trick or treaters.  Eventually I scaled back, being content with a more modest Halloween celebration.

One question asked many times: Do you ever take your pumpkins to contests? Yes, once I took one to the Puyallup Fair. At the time I had the perfect vehicle to transport the pumpkin. An AMC Pacer - the car looked very much like a pumpkin. Two of us wrestled my largest pumpkin into the front passenger seat, the seat belt wrapped around it nicely. This was the closest I would get to growing a winning pumpkin. My pumpkin weighed 178 pounds, the winning pumpkin around 500 pounds.

Last year the world’s record was over 2,600 pounds. Joel Holland won the Puyallup Fair that year and is probably the winningest pumpkin grower in the United States. The pumpkins in my yard are descendants of Joe Holland’s seeds which I purchased  four years ago. One seed from a 1,700 pound pumpkin was $35, another seed from a 1,500 pound pumpkin was $25. The seeds are called Atlantic Giants. If you want to learn more about growing them, Google: Growing Atlantic Giant Pumpkins or go to Joe Holland’s website: www.hollandsgiants.com to buy everything you might need including how-to videos.

Atlantic Giant Pumpkins were created by Howard Dill of Nova Scotia, I used to purchase my seeds from Dill - I would call him at home, chat and order my seeds.

Another Giant Pumpkin milestone: Norm Gallagher  of Lake Chelan set the world record in 1984 with a 612 pound pumpkin. There was a pumpkin weigh-in at Lake Chelan that I attended. I asked one growers’ wives how her husband prepares his soil: She told me that he digs a hole the size of an Olympic swimming pool with a backhoe and then fills it with his secret mix. It took me about 10 years to realize the scope of what is involved in growing world record pumpkins. Gradually I realized  I would have to be content with growing the biggest pumpkin in Magnolia.

I did stop growing pumpkins for a few years when I became a realtor 21 years ago. At one of the pumpkin weigh-ins I purchased one of the pumpkins that was too small to place in the contest - I had bales of straw in the yard level with the back of the grower’s pick-up truck. It’s amazing how hard it is to slide a 900 pound pumpkin out of a pick-up truck. I bought more pumpkins that year and had a nice display in the yard. What motivated me to start growing pumpkins again was when a man walked up to me with his two children and said: “I want to thank you, when I was growing up my parents would bring me to your pumpkin patch, now I am bringing my children.” I hear similar comments several times every year.

What do you do with the pumpkins after Halloween? People look at me like I am a bad person because I don’t turn them into a thousand pumpkin pies or give them to a food bank. The reality is they are a hybrid for size and speed of growth.  I have tried and I thought I had found the answer when a friend who had attended the Cordon Blue School of Cooking in France asked if she could have a pumpkin to make pies. She reduced and reduced for two days until she could reduce no more, there was still no flavor.  I also tried boiling a few pieces of pumpkin and eating them like squash. I am not sure what happened, maybe it was the large amount of Miracle Grow fertilizer that I use - my face and head turned red and streamed with sweat for about 20 minutes after eating two small pieces.

After Halloween, the pumpkins are composted and used as nutrients for next year’s growth. If a few are still in good shape they will stay through Thanksgiving before returning to the earth.

Do you roast the seeds?  If you like eating thin pieces of plywood you might enjoy them. I save the seeds for growing, if you knock on my door in the spring I am happy to give you some. There are up to 600 seeds in a Giant Pumpkin. if you had a prize winning pumpkin and sold the seeds for $35 each, you would not think about roasting $28,000 dollars.

Will you sell me a pumpkin?  I have never sold a pumpkin. The pumpkins stay in the yard for everyone to enjoy.

When do you start them? I start the around May 1st in 4 inch peat pots using Miracle Grow potting soil. I then place them on my stereo amplifier which provides a small amount of heat. They should come up in 5-7 days. Once they are up the roots are coming through the bottom of the peat pot. It is then time to replant into a quart or half gallon size pot. Put them in a greenhouse or take them out of the house to the sunniest warmest location during the day, return them to the house at night. In another week the roots will be coming out of the bottom of the pot. You can then plant directly into your growing area or transplant to larger pots, repeating the process. The roots grow very fast, you don’t want to leave them in a pot that has roots coming out of the bottom.

How do you grow them? Rich soil and compost, the maximum amount of sun, fertilizer -  water soluble such as Miracle Grow or organic fertilizer or both. If you are serious about growing giant pumpkins, Google: Growing Atlantic Giant Pumpkins or purchase a video from Joel Holland.

What is the biggest pumpkin you have grown?  My biggest pumpkin was last year—around 600 pounds.

One last bit of trivia: One year I had a bad crop and felt it necessary to purchase a few large pumpkins from Country Farms Produce on Highway 99. I overlooked the price that had been written on with a grease pencil. I was soon confronted and accused of being a fraud by an irate pumpkin patch enthusiast.

Currently:   2021, the main area in front of my house has four plants growing there. On the south side of the house there are two pumpkin plants.  The parking/planting strip had two pumpkin plants.

In 2017 The US record for largest pumpkin grown in America was 2,363 pounds by Joel Holland.

September 27th 2021, a new world record. Stefano Cutrupi from Italy broke the record with a 1226kg (2,702lb) pumpkin.

I am a realtor with John L Scott. Feel free to contact me with any questions about pumpkins or Real Estate. If you would like free Atlantic Giant Pumpkin seeds just ask me.

Sincerely,

Greg Shaw

206-579-5475

gregshaw@johnlscott.com

https://www.gregshawmagnolia.com