Backyard Giants Read online

  Any storm could wipe out a pumpkin grower's months of work in a few short minutes. A burst of wind-driven, pea-sized hail could shred pumpkin leaves into cole slaw. Bigger hail could pound the plants to smithereens, smashing stems, crushing vines, and leaving the tender skin of the growing pumpkins cratered with dents. The plants were huge—500 to 900 square feet—the size of a one-bedroom apartment. There was no way of sheltering them. Even one gust of 60-mph wind could turn the broad, flapping surface of the pumpkin leaves into sails that could rip the vine from the ground and lift it into the air. Strong winds had been known to snap a plant from its stump and hurl it all the way across the yard.

  Outside, the air was dead still. Then the night sky darkened ominously, and the wind began to blow. "Here we go," thought Ron. He dashed outside and started across the yard to make sure the sheets were secured around the baby pumpkins. The cloth covers would at least provide a little protection if hail began to fall. But within seconds, the rain began to pound down and the wind whipped the trees as lightning lit up the sky and thunder crashed so loudly that Ron turned back. Pumpkins weren't worth dying for. There was nothing he could do now except watch the storm blow through, wait for morning, and repair whatever damage he could.

  As Ron retreated inside the house to watch the storm from his window, the phone began to ring as the other growers called to check in with him and find out if he was getting hit. They called one after another, beeping in on call-waiting, so that he jumped from one person to the next without ever hanging up the phone. And then, as suddenly as it had started, the wind died down, though the rain continued to fall hard and steady in the dark. The worst of the storm had passed by. Ron woke briefly during the night to hear another thunderstorm blowing through about 2 A.M. "Jesus," he thought, before falling back to sleep. "All that hard work for nuthin'." But when he woke up at first light and went outside to check on the pumpkins, he found no harm done. "I didn't have even one leaf bent over," he said. "We dodged a real big bullet."

  The pumpkins, meanwhile, were gathering steam. During the early days, the newly pollinated pumpkin grows so quickly that its progress is visible day to day. The fruit swells from the size of an egg to that of a baseball within a day of, then to the size of a grapefruit, a cantaloupe, a volleyball, a basketball, a beach ball. After a couple weeks, the daily difference in size becomes less obvious, but the weight begins to pile on—30 to 40 pounds a day or more at peak growth.

  By the weekend of July 22, the Wallaces' pumpkins already were beginning to look like giants. It was as if someone had found the air valve and pumped them up several sizes. The green canopy of their pumpkin patch was punctuated with 10 pale-yellow crescents looming moonlike above the leaves. Most of the pumpkins were now 16 to 20 days old, with the largest about two feet tall and approaching 200 pounds.

  That was good, and over the next several days, the Wallaces would be getting an idea of whether it was going to be good enough. They would begin measuring and charting the pumpkins every week, starting when each pumpkin reached its 20-day birthday after pollination. They hoped to have pumpkins measuring 210 pounds at the 20-day mark. Then if the pumpkin put on 25 to 30 pounds a day, they'd be right around 420 pounds by the end of July. "If you're going to be world-class, that's the kind of growth you've got to have," Dick said.

  The Rhode Island club was hosting visitors that weekend: three pumpkin growers in their early twenties from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan who had decided on the spur of the moment to drive to Rhode Island to tour the patches of the world-champion pumpkin growing club. Dick had received an e-mail from one of the young growers asking if they could sleep on the floor at his house. It was a little disconcerting to get that kind of request from a total stranger, but the pumpkin growers were a worldwide community with an implicit trust. Criminals would never grow giant pumpkins, growers believed; it was too much hard work with too little payoff. In that world, Dick Wallace, especially, had gained a reputation for hospitality.

  Lots of stories about Dick's generosity circulated among pumpkin growers, but a favorite was of the British pumpkin grower who came to the United States one summer a few years before to tour American patches. Another U.S. grower had called Dick to ask if he would mind if the British visitor stayed with him for a day or two as he scouted out New England patches. "Whoa now, wait a minute," Dick answered, "Who is this guy? How long has he been growing pumpkins?"

  "He's been growing about eight years," the grower answered.

  "Well, what's the biggest pumpkin he's ever grown?" Dick asked.

  "About eight hundred pounds."

  "Eight hundred pounds?" Dick repeated. "He's been growing eight years and the best he's done is eight hundred pounds?"

  "Yeah, that's right," said the other grower, beginning to feel a little put out.

  "Well then," Dick roared, "tell him to come on down. Anybody who grows giant pumpkins for eight years and doesn't give up even though he's never gotten over eight hundred pounds has got to be okay. He's growing for the right reasons."

  So Dick naturally said yes to the three young visitors and arranged a patch tour for them that Saturday afternoon. They stopped for lunch at Peter Rondeau's house, where the growers stood around comparing notes. Now that everyone's pumpkins were well underway, the main question was how fast they were growing—and how fast they needed to be growing to be a world champion. If a grower was aiming for 1,500 pounds, how big should the pumpkin be at the 30-day mark? How big should it be at 40 and 50 days?

  Most of the major weigh-off contests are held around the first week of October, so the growers had about 90 days to grow a world-record pumpkin—July, August, and September. The arc of weight gain for the pumpkins is shaped like a steep hill, curving up in July, peaking in August, and declining in September. Dick and Ron figured that if they were going to have a shot at 1,500 pounds, they had to have a 400- to 500-pound pumpkin by the end of July. Then they'd have to push to add 800 pounds in August. Eight hundred pounds in August. To put that in perspective, the 1990 world title had gone to a pumpkin weighing 816.5 pounds after growing a full season. Now growers were talking about doing that much in just one month. That would mean an average weight gain in August of 26 pounds a day.

  The problem with that was the growth curve. At the beginning of August, a world-class pumpkin might start off growing 40 pounds a day, but as the fruit begins to mature, and as the days get shorter, with less sunlight, and the cool nights return toward the end of the month, growth slows dramatically. By September, adding 15 pounds a day is considered good. And by the end of September, most East Coast pumpkins stop growing entirely. Then it's just a matter of holding steady until the weigh-off.

  After lunch, Dick shooed the visiting growers into their cars for the next stop, Joe Jutras's house. Dick was trying to keep the group on time. He was irritable and a little anxious. He'd promised Cathy he'd be home by 4 P.M. to take her and their granddaughter, Rene, shopping for a new pair of running shoes. This was not optional, and he needed the tour to stay on schedule so he could make it home on time. But trying was pointless: By the time they wound up the tour late that afternoon, they were running nearly two hours behind. Dick had to peel off early to make it home by his deadline. The fact of the matter was, it hadn't been the best time for hosting a patch tour. July is the peak work month in the pumpkin patch. It's also the time when the "pumpkin wid­ows" begin to roar.

  There are plenty of women who grow giant pumpkins, but by far the biggest faction of competitive growers is made up of middle-aged men, most with wives and children. By mid-July, growers' wives had endured two and a half months of the growing season, with their husbands spending more and more time in the garden tending the plants. It wasn't just the time stolen from their families; it was the obsession that drove the wives crazy. Year-round they had to endure the hours their husbands spent chatting with other growers on the Internet, or researching new fertilizers and pesticides and exchanging seeds. They had to watch as a big chunk of their
backyard was dug up and turned into a pile of dirt that smelled like dead fish and manure. Then the junk would start piling up: the 50-gallon plastic barrels and the garden hoses and the buckets and jugs of pesticides and fertilizers and the sheets and towels and long-handled gardening tools.

  So it was already bad enough by May, but then as the growing season got underway, the to-do lists around the house would get steadily longer as chores were neglected and even major maintenance was postponed. Growers tend to be workaholics who spend long hours at their day jobs, then come home and head straight into the pumpkin patch, where they often stay until after dark. The faster the vines grow, the more time the plants require. And over the years, as the growers got more hooked on the hobby and more competitive, they'd often want to increase their odds of success by growing more plants.

  And so the dirt patches would get bigger and the lawns would get smaller and the hours in the garden would get longer. The obsession didn't stop when they came in the house. The whole family's nerves were frayed from the grower's constant fretting over the plants. Wives had to listen and nod and pretend to be interested as their husbands babbled on about 1068s and 1370s and 1225s and 1354s. They had to listen to endless discussions about pollination and pruning and growth charts. They had to endure snarling moods when things went wrong—as things frequently did. They had to constantly clean up mud and dirt and manure tracked into the house.

  And if all that wasn't bad enough, the phone rang constantly as other growers called to compare notes or ask advice. If the growers were out in the garden, the wives would get peppered with questions about the plants.

  "Some days," Cathy Wallace admitted, "I think I'm going to go insane if one more pumpkin grower calls."

  The wives all had different ways of coping. Some grudgingly endured, with their annoyance occasionally erupting into an argument over the amount of time or money or talk spent on pumpkins. Some laid down the law, setting deadlines, for chores and limiting the hours their husbands could spend in the patch. Most understood that their husbands were pursuing their passion—a passion, happily, that kept them at home. These wives simply demanded a little balance. They insisted their husbands make it to the dinner table at a certain time, or reserve some hours in the day to spend with the family. Steve Daletas, the 2003 world-record holder from Oregon, agreed to take the whole 2006 growing season off to devote to his wife and two children.

  Wives who had their own hobbies handled it better. Sue Jutras liked to grow things too, so she understood that part of her husband's obsession. She had her own vegetable garden and took charge of much of the landscaping around the house. In recent years, she had started raising orchids after Joe gave her one of the exotic plants for Valentine's Day. Orchid growers are as passionate as pumpkin growers, so while Joe tended to his giant pumpkins, Sue tended to her flowers. Joe had recently added on a sunroom to the house to give her a better place to keep the orchids.

  Tracy Rondeau had found that her husband's pumpkin obsession gave her new leverage around the house. She would agree to nag-free time in the pumpkin patch if Peter finished other household chores first. And she wasn't beyond threatening sabotage. She'd gotten fed up that year with the ugly sight of the 50-gallon drums and gardening equipment piled at the back of the yard. Peter had never gotten around to putting up the fence he'd promised to build to hide it. So one evening Tracy told him that if it wasn't done by the end of the week, she'd see to it that he didn't have a single female flower left on his plants to pollinate. The fence—cute wood pickets with a wooden pumpkin sitting on top—went right up. "I've discovered the secret," she said, laughing. She confessed she'd even threatened to cut the pumpkins off the vines or pull up all his plants if he didn't take care of his household responsibilities.

  "He knows deep down that I wouldn't really do it," she said. "But there's just the tiniest doubt. When I got really mad at him and told him I used his toothbrush to clean out the toilet, he didn't really believe I did that either. But he still threw away his toothbrush."

  Her frustration was understandable. Over the years, she'd put up with a lot from Peter and his pumpkins. Unlike most of the other Rhode Island pumpkin growers, with their multiacre expanses of property, the Rondeaus lived on a suburban street and had a modest, suburban-sized backyard. Peter had always used part of the yard for a vegetable garden, but when he got hooked on giant pumpkins, he had expanded the garden to 1,500 square feet, taking up nearly the entire backyard.

  This year, he'd cut down several trees on the perimeter of the yard during the winter to bring in more sunlight. He'd had seven cubic yards of cow manure delivered on Easter Sunday. "Great, Dad. Smells good," his teenage daughter had commented.

  Peter tried to do his part to keep the peace. He grew a few decorative gourd plants for his wife each year. And he made sure he came up with at least one nice, big orange pumpkin for his wife and daughters to carve for Halloween. His job conducting safety-training classes for plant workers kept him away during the day, while Tracy, a manicurist, often worked into the evening and on Saturdays. So as soon as Peter got home, he'd go straight outside and get all his work done in the pumpkin patch. That way, he said, "When my wife gets home, it's, 'What would you like to do, honey?'"

  Tracy had her own interests and hobbies. She described herself as "Martha Stewart on steroids" and spent much of her free time making crafts and thinking up new decorating projects. So she appreciated that Peter had things he loved to do, too. She looked on the bright side. Lots of men had hobbies like hunting or fishing or golf that took them away from home. Peter already had to travel a lot for his job. "And now he can't wait to get home to his patch," she said.

  A few wives made it work by sharing the hobby with their husbands. Gerry Checkon was intrigued by the giant pumpkin her husband, Larry, grew his first year, so she decided to grow her own pumpkin the next season. She not only grew a bigger pumpkin than her husband; she set the 1998 world record. Now the couple divide their pumpkin patch into his-and-her halves. "He goes out and does his stuff, and if I want to be with him, then I'm out there with him. And if I want to be in the house, then I'm in the house. When he's not at work, he's out there, so I always know where my husband is," Gerry reasons.

  Sherry LaRue picked up the hobby when she resigned herself to the fact that it was the best way to spend time with her husband, Jack. Their three older daughters had never been very interested in the pumpkins, but their youngest decided to try growing in 1995. She was only 9, but she did all the work with Jack's guidance. At the end of the season, when they lifted the pumpkin to take it to a weigh-off, they discovered it had cracked, which made it ineligible for the contest. That was a keen disappointment, and the next year their daughter went back to more typical 10-year-old stuff like soccer and hanging out with her friends.

  As Jack got more caught up in the competitive part of the hobby and started growing more plants, he began spending all his spare time in the patch. "I found that if I wanted to talk to him, I was doing it in the garden," said Sherry. "He would say, 'Could you pull that weed while you're there? Would you hold this? Do that?' " Sherry also helped out by pollinating the plants during the week when Jack had to leave early for the office. "I decided that if I was doing some of the work, then I might as well enter the contest myself. So I started growing my own plants."

  Sherry didn't want anyone to think that she was entering a pumpkin that really had been grown by her husband—a perennial complaint at the weigh-off contests that limit entries to one pumpkin per grower. Growers with multiple big pumpkins have been known to enter them under the names of their wives and children, even though they hadn't really done much more than turn on the sprinklers. That wasn't considered fair to the growers who really put in the work. So Sherry demanded her own space in the garden and kept her pumpkins separate from her husband's. She did all the work on her own plants, from picking the seeds to pruning the vines. Though she doesn't grow nearly as many plants as Jack, the hobby has come to unite them
, instead of dividing them.

  Early on, as they both began spending more time in the garden, they resolved to set aside one day each weekend to do things together as a family—to go hiking in the mountains or take a trip to the beach. As their children grew up and moved out, they continued to set the time aside for themselves. "It might just be dinner and a movie, but it is time away from the pumpkins," Sherry said.

  By July 26, Ron and Dick had all the 20-day measurements they needed to give them a better idea how their pumpkins were shaping up. It was looking good. A few even appeared to be—though it made them nervous to say so—on a world-record pace. They'd made separate growth charts for each pumpkin so they could compare the growth rates.

  Estimating the weight of a giant, irregular object of unknown density is a tricky matter. But over the years, a few pumpkin growers with a talent for math had boiled down hundreds of pumpkin weights and measurements to come up with a formula for how much a pumpkin weighs based on a combination of three measurements. One is a simple circumference measurement taken roughly parallel to the ground at the pumpkin's fattest point. Charts had been composed using the circumference measurement alone to give growers a rough idea of how much their pumpkins might weigh. As a pumpkin gets bigger, every inch of circumference accounts for exponentially greater mass, and therefore many more pounds. For instance, a ioo-inch circumference would translate to about a 273pound pumpkin, while a 181-inch circumference would yield a 1,300-pound pumpkin.