Backyard Giants Read online

  Backyard

  Giants

  Backyard

  Giants

  The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest

  to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever

  Susan Warren

  BLOOMSBURY

  Copyright © Z007 by Susan Warren

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

  Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

  All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

  eISBN: 978-1-59691-931-0

  First U.S. Edition 2007

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset by Westchester Book Group

  Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

  Early to bed,

  Early to rise,

  Work like hell and fertilize.

  —Emily Whaley

  Contents

  Prologue

  1: A Look Back

  2: Dick and Ron

  3: Seeds

  4: All Pumpkins Aren't Orange

  5: Dirt

  6: Planting

  7: A Change in the Weather

  8: The Troubles

  9: The Killer Cross

  10: Choices

  11: Grow 'em Big

  12: Humpty Dumpty

  13: The Reckoning

  14: Topsfield

  15: It Is What It Is

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  Prologue

  RON AND DICK WALLACE leaned over the sides of a wood-slatted cart parked at the edge of their concrete driveway south of Providence, Rhode Island. Both men stared intently at the assortment of pumpkin seedlings inside, their eyes resting on each small plant in its turn. There it was: The 2006 growing season, all laid out before them in the flat bottom of a four-by-four-foot, two-wheeled wagon. If the months ahead held a world-champion pumpkin for the Wallaces, it would come from one of these 20 plants. But which one? Ron's eyes drilled into each seedling, trying to see its future. He studied their color, their shape, their size. They were bright-green splashes in dirt-filled peat pots. Some of the week-old seedlings were only about three inches tall, others nearly five inches. But those tiny plants held extraordinary expectations.

  For the past 15 years, Ron, a 40-year-old country club manager, and his father, Dick, a retired factory superintendent, had run a race with hundreds of other growers around the world trying to grow a pumpkin big enough to set a new world record. Competitive growers were on a mission to create steadily bigger monster pumpkins, finding new ways to stretch the limits of Mother Nature. Between 1988 and 2005, the world record was broken 14 times.

  Pumpkins were growing so freakishly large, even the growers were beginning to wonder if they were nearing a limit. Surely, at some point, Mother Nature would put her foot down. Progress already seemed to be slowing. The bigger the pumpkins got, the more they seemed to be splitting wide open or rotting on the vine before they could get to a weigh-off. Then again, many people had thought a 1,000-pound fruit was beyond the reach of mankind until a New York grower shattered that barrier in 1996. Now the next breakthrough loomed: 1,500 pounds, a three-quarter-ton fruit. The thought consumed the daydreams of every grower who fantasized about walking to the podium at the annual growers' convention to claim the orange blazer awarded for the biggest pumpkin of the year. Every grower hoped to be the one to crash through that 1,500-pound barrier. And if a grower could manage that, then anything was possible. Even, maybe, one day, a one-ton pumpkin.

  So each year, growers wage a battle of good and evil on an epic scale, fighting off disease, voracious insects, and four-legged vermin that could reduce their colossus to compost fodder literally overnight. They invest hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, and spend long hours in hard physical labor, pruning and weeding and feeding and watering. They cut down trees that block the sun. They dig up their dirt and send it to laboratories for scientific analysis. Vacations are postponed, marriages are strained, and friends neglected as growers devote every spare moment to their pumpkin patch during the peak season. The dream is that by the time the harvest moon rises in the late-September sky, all that sacrifice will have produced at least one giant pumpkin with a chance to set a new world record, or at least to win a local weigh-off. But every year, the competition gets stiffer as more growers discover the hobby and the secrets of giant-pumpkin growing spread around the world from the United States to Europe to Australia and Japan.

  What makes a man spend half his year busting his guts to grow a giant pumpkin, and the other half dreaming about it? It's just a hobby, after all. And, Ron didn't kid himself, a somewhat ridiculous hobby. "You've got to remember, you're growing a pumpkin here, not curing cancer," he often reminded his fellow Rhode Island growers—and himself. But like any other obsession, there's something else going on. A need to break barriers, to defy the odds, to test the limits of one's own abilities. Giant-pumpkin growers are on a quest for satisfaction, distinction, respect; they're not much different from athletes who compete for an Olympic gold medal to prove they've reached the pinnacle of their sport. Ron wanted more than just to grow big pumpkins; he wanted to grow the biggest pumpkin the world had ever seen.

  In the realm of giant-pumpkin growers, the Wallaces were as skilled and knowledgeable as anyone. But they weren't perfect. They made mistakes. And luck had never been on their side. Over the years they'd grown respectable contenders, sometimes even potential world-record-beaters, but victory had been snatched away by a succession of villains: hungry insects and rodents, nasty microbes, blistering heat, and early cold snaps. Those were bitter disappointments. But the nice thing about life in the garden is that every year you get a new chance.

  The pumpkin seedlings spread out now before Ron and Dick Wallace represented prime genetic stock from some of the world's best growers: Checkon, Jutras, Davies, Rose, and of course, Wallace. Each one had the potential to grow a champion pumpkin. And in just a few minutes, Ron and Dick would be planting some of them into the ground to launch the race for the 2006 world record. Ron had been watching the seedlings grow all week. He already had ideas about a few of them. But now he had to make his final choice.

  He reached into the wagon and gently turned one of the pots, appraising the plant from every angle. He moved it to one side and reached for another. There was just one thing he needed to know from each seedling: What can you do for me? Which one would grow into the biggest and healthiest plant? Which one would pour enough energy into a pumpkin to push it over 1,300, 1,400—maybe even 1,500 pounds? Which one? Ultimately, giant-pumpkin genetics are a crapshoot, and Ron was staring down at the gaming table. It was time to place his bets.

  1

  A Look Back

  THE YEAR BEFORE, like every other year the Wallaces had been growing, had started out with infinite optimism. Ron and his dad had that charged-up feeling you get when you think—you know—"This is it. It's my turn." Two thousand and five was going to be the Wallaces' big year.

  Except it wasn't. Out of eight giant pumpkins the Wallaces grew in 2005, six never made it to the weigh-off scale. The biggest one that did was puny by competitive standards—only about 840 pounds. A pumpkin that size would have blown the socks off t
he gardening world just 15 years ago. But now any pumpkin less than 1,000 pounds was a candidate for the compost pile.

  So it goes in the world of competitive pumpkin growing. Not only do you risk losing at the weigh-off after months of hard work, there's a good chance you won't even make it to the contest. When pumpkins are pushed to grow so big so fast, swelling up like water balloons on the end of a garden hose, a lot more can go wrong than right. As Ron liked to put it, "Just imagine if you were putting on thirty or forty pounds a day."

  Ron and Dick belong to a special breed of gardeners that compete to grow the largest flowers, fruits, and vegetables they possibly can. At the end of every season, special events are held where the botanical marvels are weighed and measured and prizes handed out. Thus, the world had been gifted with its first 269pound watermelon, a 124-pound cabbage, a 24-pound tomato, and a carrot nearly 17 feet long. It is pumpkins, though, that have taken center stage. No other vegetable or fruit grows that big, that fast. Only pumpkins, with their timeless link to fairy tales and family holidays, attract so much wonder and attention. For gardeners seeking the thrill of competition, pumpkins are the tallest mountain in the range, the fastest car on the block.

  And yet, clearly, Mother Nature never intended pumpkins to grow as big as hot tubs. These giants are bred to be freaks. They are cultivated from an elite seed stock, then coaxed into an enormous size with special pruning techniques, relentless fertilization, and copious amounts of pesticide and fungicide. The result is not pretty. Gravity pulls on these behemoths as they grow, shaping them into lopsided lumps. The finished fruit often look less like the traditional, orange, Halloween jack-o'-lanterns than like semi-deflated balloons from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that have drifted into the garden. Many aren't even orange. Genetic tinkering has created monsters with mottled gray, white, and pink skin. As they mature, rough, cantaloupe-like veining spreads across the shell. The effect can be disturbing, as if a huge, cancerous tumor has sprouted in the garden.

  The Wallaces had grown a lot of big pumpkins. They just hadn't managed to get one big enough to win a championship. In 2000, Martha Stewart's television show called and asked to follow Ron around for part of the growing season. It was a good year for the Wallaces, and they thought they had finally grown a winner. The camera was rolling at the Topsfield Fair, where Ron had taken his biggest pumpkin hoping not only to win, but to claim the $10,000 in prize money offered to the first grower who brought in a 1,000pounder. But shortly before the weigh-off began, rival grower Steve Connolly drove up with a bigger pumpkin and snatched victory away. Ron's pumpkin weighed only 885 pounds, while Connolly's tipped over the 1,000-pound mark and won the big money. Ron was a gentleman about it. He squared his shoulders and sucked in his disappointment as he looked into Martha's cameras and offered congratulations to the winner. "He's a nice guy," Ron said. And then he made the same vow he'd made every other year. "That's not the best that we can do," he said. "We can do a lot better than that. We'll be back next year."

  But the next year and the year after that all brought the same thing: another six months of gut-wrenching effort followed by gut-wrenching disappointment. The years rolled on and the seasons piled up and still the Wallaces couldn't claim a big win. Ron prided himself on being an expert grower. He'd put in the hours, done the research, spent a lot of money, and made a lot of sacrifices. He'd earned a reputation as one of the most skilled and serious competitors in the game. Yet every year, he and his father had pitted themselves against the greatest growers in the world, and every year they'd come up short. Ron still talked up his game. But deep in his heart, he was beginning to doubt himself. What if he really didn't have what it takes? What if all his time and effort came to nothing?

  Rhode Island's small pumpkin-growing club had been in danger of falling apart when its longtime president stepped down in 2004. Already, club members had begun drifting over to the larger, more-established New England Pumpkin Growers Association in neighboring Massachusetts, which hosted the highest-profile giant-pumpkin contest in the nation at Topsfield Fair. It would have been easy just to let the club fade away and transfer loyalties to New England. Except that Dick Wallace and some of the other core members weren't ready to give up on Rhode Island.

  Dick turned to his son. Ron's work as a hard-driving, super-organized, no-nonsense business manager gave him just the kind of experience the Rhodies needed. Dick urged him to take charge of the club and build it back up. It was the last thing Ron had time for. He nearly killed himself already fitting in his pumpkin growing on top of the 50 to 60 hours he spent every week at the country club. But Ron also saw an opportunity.

  "Rhode Island—smallest state, smallest pumpkins." It was just a wisecrack by another New England grower that Ron had overheard at one of the weigh-offs a few years before. But the words still stung, and Ron itched to prove how wrong they were. At a birthday party for one of the club members, fellow grower Joe Jutras had given what Ron now calls his Knute Rockne speech—a rousing battle cry to the Rhode Island brothers. Joe, a 50-year old woodworker with a freckled complexion and red hair fading to gray, was usually the gentle voice in a loud crowd. But that day he was fired up and eager to show the world that tiny Rhode Island shouldn't be underestimated. "We can beat those guys!" Joe declared. Their smallness, he said, would be their strength. Many of the Rhode Island growers lived within just a few miles of each other. The whole state was only about 1,200 square miles, smaller than the city metro area of Miami. If the Rhodies shared their knowledge and experience, they could not only increase the expertise of the whole group, but also bring newer growers up to competitive speed faster.

  In a world without giant pumpkins, the Rhode Island growers probably would never have found themselves in the same room together. They were all men, but other than that, they had little in common. They were young, old, and middle-aged. Scott Palmer was a welder; Joe Jutras owned a custom-cabinetry business with his two brothers; Ron Wallace ran a country club; Dick was a retired factory manager; Peter Rondeau ran a business in safety-training for chemical-plant workers. But their lives shared a common thread even before pumpkins: gardening. Not a sunbonnet-and-canvas-gloves, puttering-about-in-the-flowers kind of gardening, but testosterone-charged muscle gardening. These men grew things you could eat—tomatoes and eggplant and asparagus—and they grew them big. They cultivated fruit trees laden with apples and peaches and pears. They produced showcase plants like towering sunflowers and dahlias. But at some point in the past 15 years, each one had drifted into the world of giant-pumpkin growing, and pumpkins had quickly consumed everything else.

  Ron agreed to take over as president of the club on one condi­tion: Every member had to pitch in and do his part to make it work. No secrets. No bullshitting. No backstabbing. Everyone had to help each other. Then, let the best grower win. At the start of the 2005 season, the club renamed itself the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers (SNGPG) to include growers from neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut. And then the seeds went in the ground and the work began.

  Mother Nature didn't make it easy. The season started cold and wet and then turned hot and dry. But by weigh-off time at the beginning of October, several of the club's growers had pumpkins on track to weigh well over 1,000 pounds. Ron and Dick Wallace had two they estimated to be in the 1,300-pound range—easily the biggest pumpkins they'd ever grown.

  The Wallaces were counting on those pumpkins to help boost Rhode Island into the top ranks of growing clubs that year. So it was a huge blow when they lost both their pumpkins just days before the weigh-off. Giant pumpkins are vulnerable to bacteria and fungi that can rot them from the inside out. Sometimes, a grower doesn't even know what happened. Something just goes wrong somewhere in some invisible way. Then a soft spot appears, like a bruise on an apple. By the time a grower sees it, it's usually too late.

  Ron had noticed just such a soft spot near the base of his pumpkin as he made his daily patch inspection three days before the weigh-off. Th
e bathtub-sized pumpkins were sitting there in his garden, huge and orange and beautiful. But the soft spot—rot—spread fast. Ron stood with his feet planted in the rich, black earth and his heart sinking, staring down at the monster that had consumed his life for the past six months. A thick orangey soup had begun to seep from beneath. A sweet stench filled his nostrils. There was no room for hope anymore. It was over. His giant pumpkin was going down.

  Ron's disappointment was sharp and deep, and all too familiar. He cracked the rotting skin open in hopes of recovering some seeds. But the seeds, swimming in a fetid pool of neon-orange slime, were limp and lifeless. Disgusted, he left the broken shards of giant pumpkin lying in the grass next to the garden, an organic monument to disappointment.

  The Wallaces were thankful they at least had another big one left—their biggest. It was a huge, flattish beast shaped like a giant beanbag chair. The pumpkin was so heavy it had sunk several inches into the deeply tilled earth of the garden. But early on the morning before the weigh-off, as the harvesting crew of fellow growers arrived to help pick and load the pumpkin, Ron and Dick noticed a wet spot in the dirt. Dick dipped his fingers into the muddy soil, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed the unmistakable perfume of rotten fruit. The pumpkin was finished—probably from the same fungal infection that took down the other one.

  The ugly collapse of a year's work was hard to bear. Ron stalked away scowling. But Dick, a 6 5-year-old former marine, just laughed. "If you can't take defeat," he shrugged, "this isn't the hobby for you." He used a small saw to cut into the pumpkin and reached inside to look for seeds. As he stirred his hand through the stinking soup, the smell billowed into the air, making the growers standing nearby gag and laugh in revulsion. There were no seeds worth saving, so Dick posed for pictures beside the putrid corpse, the saw held across his chest like a warrior's sword.