Backyard Giants Read online

  "That's the kind of generosity you find in the pumpkin world," Dave recalled thinking to himself. "We'll give you all the tips and all the information. And then if you beat me, you beat me. But if I beat you, I know I'm beating you at your best."

  It hadn't always been that way. When the sporting aspect of the hobby was gaining momentum in the 1980s, thanks to Howard Dill's Atlantic Giant seed, most growers striving to grow the Big One jealously guarded both their seeds and information. Few were willing to share anything that might give another grower an advantage. Bad blood boiled up frequently among growers, who were then more adversaries than colleagues.

  The constant backbiting and petty rivalries led to a fracturing of the competitive-growing community. At one point in 1993, rival groups bickered over who could claim the world record—each group claimed the other group's top grower had broken the rules and should be disqualified. Finally, the leader of the group with the smaller pumpkin succeeded in registering with the Guinness Book of World Records.

  The move was viewed as the ultimate in competitive nastiness, and support consolidated around the group that felt cheated, the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. In recent years, the GPC has been the ruling organization over most weigh-offs around the country, save for some West Coast growers who have stuck with the rival International Pumpkin Association. Today, the GPC recognizes its own grower, Donald Black, as the 1993 world-record holder for his 884-pound pumpkin.

  The secretiveness that had ruled over the hobby early on gradually faded away as the Internet came along. There are few secrets on the World Wide Web. Growers began posting Internet pages with tips and instructions on how to grow the giants. Web sites devoted to pumpkins and giant pumpkins began appearing, complete with pictures and records of all the world champions. Growers soon realized the wealth of information publicly available to any newcomer was actually helping the hobby, not hurting it. The shorter learning curve meant a new grower could easily produce a 300- or-5 00 pound pumpkin the first year. Those speedy results encouraged even more people to try, and as more people tried it, more became addicted.

  Competition got stiffer as people were able to quickly gain growing expertise and produce world-class pumpkins in just a few years, instead of the dozen or more years it used to take to figure it all out. Naturally, some of the old-timers resented that a little. But they also saw the the benefits of bringing more people into the fold. New growing clubs were formed to accommodate the influx of growers, even in places like the Deep South, Arizona, and Alaska, where the miracle of growing a gigantic pumpkin was even more wondrous because of the cold or the heat or the humidity or the dryness. The more the clubs expanded, the more members there were to pay dues, bringing in more money for bigger prizes, which made the weigh-offs more exciting and attracted more people.

  And so a new attitude was born among pumpkin growers—a Muskateerish one-for-all-and-all-for-one kind of creed where sharing information was applauded and stinginess and secrecy and dishonesty condemned. Except that pumpkin growers were still human beings with human foibles, and so every year there were still plenty of people whining and bellyaching. Sniping and gossiping about other growers' techniques or habits was a common and even popular pastime. And in the comfortable anonymity of the Internet, it could get quite vicious. Especially when growers were antsy and cranky and bored.

  The desire to plant the best and "hottest" seeds each year came from the desire to win. And the stakes had only gotten higher in recent years as the prizes awarded at weigh-offs climbed into the realm of real money. A championship pumpkin could easily win $3,000 to $5,000 at just one weigh-off, and the amount could be doubled or tripled if it set a new world record.

  Meanwhile, the plant-variety protection—the botanical world's version of a patent—expired on Howard Dill's Atlantic Giant seeds in 2005, meaning anyone could sell or market giant-pumpkin seeds. Anyone at all. Which was a worry. Pumpkin seeds don't have fingerprints; there are no unique marks that can prove any given seed is authentic. So a dishonest seller could claim his seed was anything he wanted, and no one would be the wiser. Even among growers who swapped seeds, some of that had undoubtedly been going on. No one had kept a strict count, but growers noted hundreds of plants had been represented as 723 Bobiers over the years—many more than could possibly have existed. A reputation for honesty and integrity was a competitive pumpkin grower's only guarantee of authenticity. So those who prized championship genetics over everything else could not risk obtaining a seed from an unknown grower. They planted a seed only if they had bred it themselves, or if they knew it came from a trusted competitor with the same high standards. This is why a doctored photograph of a pumpkin grown in Germany ignited a raging controversy early in 2006. The pumpkin was proclaimed by its grower to have set a new European record at 1233.5 pounds. Not only that, but it was a gorgeous, round, orangey-red fruit. The young grower, a college student, posted pictures of his champion on his BigPumpkins.com diary. It was both beast and beauty, and the pumpkin world buzzed with admiration. "This really has a good chance to be a landmark seed . . . imagine the flood of new orange genetics that will be produced next year all coming from that one pumpkin," wrote one grower on BigPumpkins.com.

  Sure enough, the young grower was bombarded with requests for seeds. Then someone noticed that the picture he'd posted was a fake. It was a crude digital cut-and-paste job. If the photo was a fake, was the pumpkin a fraud, too? The prospect of a questionable seed entering competitive bloodlines in a big way was a disturbing prospect to many serious growers. Debate raged in the cyber hallways of BigPumpkins.com over whether the seed should be accepted or boycotted.

  The young grower defended himself. He said his camera had broken and he hadn't been able to get a picture of his pumpkin as it was weighed. He admitted the photo he'd posted was doctored, but he insisted the pumpkin was genuine. In the end, each grower had to make up his own mind whether to plant the seed. Some stood behind it. But many wouldn't touch it. "Too many questions for me," said one veteran grower.

  As the summer heat wave wore on, air conditioners were turned on high and the nation's power grid continued to strain with the unprecedented demand for electricity. The air, still packed with moisture from the heavy rains, created smothering, saunalike conditions. As summer's furnace heated up the air, black thunderclouds boiled up in the sky each afternoon, exploding with violent blasts of rain and wind and lightning. And Southern New England pumpkin growers seemed to have a bull's-eye on them.

  Another violent thunderstorm swept across Massachusetts and into Rhode Island the first week of August. Part of Steve Connolly's patch was flattened, sending him to the hardware store for bamboo to prop up his leaves. "I think God invented bamboo for us pumpkin growers," he said.

  Peter Rondeau had just arrived home from work when the same storm reared up and sent him running into his backyard to batten down the hatches. "It was really lightning," Peter said. "The dogs were barking, the wind was blowing. Everything was going crazy. I'm running out there with the hail hitting me in the head, and I'm wondering, 'What am I doing?' "

  Peter's small yard turned out to be an advantage, as his house and trees provided good wind protection from the storm's fury. The Wallaces suffered a few rolled vines and some broken leaves. Ron was at work when the storm hit, so he woke up at 5 the next morning to repair the damage before the sun came out in full force.

  Ron and his dad had measured their pumpkins a few days before the end of July, and Ron was afraid to let himself believe the numbers. Despite his vow to stay calm, he couldn't help it; hope bubbled in his chest. They had several strong growers. The biggest was the 500 Wallace, measuring an estimated 416 pounds and gaining 31 pounds a day. But there was a 1068 estimated at 407 pounds, even though it was three days younger and it was gaining a whopping 3 8 pounds a day. That one made Ron's stomach do a flip-flop—it was a world-record pace. And there was another 1068 closing in on 400 with gains of 37 pounds a day.

  Now was not the time
to be knocked out of commission by a storm. Ron worked three hours, rolling the vines back into position, trimming off broken leaves and propping up bent ones. He hoped he wouldn't suffer too much of a setback, but the storm wasn't his main worry. His main worry was the foaming stump slime that had made its appearance in the Wallace patch a few days before.

  The first sign of the disease had appeared on a plant that already was having problems. It had never grown as well as the other plants, so when the stump began to foam, Ron and his dad decided to rip it out rather than try to save it. That way, they hoped to keep the disease from spreading to the other plants. But it was too late. A couple days later, Ron and his dad found one of their 1068s oozing foamy slime. They'd cleaned out the stump, applied fungicide, and set up a fan to blow on it. Then they started pampering the plants, hand-watering underneath the leaves like the Checkons, and pulling weeds that were competing for nutrients. Ron spent $250 for a gallon of commercial-grade fungicide used to fight disease on golf courses. He drenched his patch and shared the fungicide with other club members.

  The weather refused to cooperate. Ron described it as "swampy and nasty," like he'd never felt it before. Just as things started to dry out, another thunderstorm would roll up and dump another inch or two of rain. The garden never got a chance to dry out. No wonder disease was showing up. Ron and Dick finally decided to remove the stump from the diseased 1068 to keep the infection from killing the whole plant. Ron cut the main vine a few feet from its base, then pulled up the stump and threw it away. He still had a big plant left, with a huge root system from the buried vines. This would be the real test of the mycorrhizae program he'd been following. Had it built enough of a root system to keep the plant alive and the pumpkin growing? Apparently so. The stumpless 1068 continued to grow, though it had slowed from gaining 26 pounds a day to 20, based on the measurements Ron and Dick were taking more frequently now. Ron found that interesting: "Maybe this time of year, the stump doesn't matter as much as we think."

  The Wallaces stepped up their fertilizing program, so Ron was spraying the plants with compost tea every week. He was feeling good, despite the stump rot. "We're down to eight competition plants," he said. "If we can still get four or five to the scale, then you can't ask for anything more."

  On his morning patrol later that week, Ron discovered a third plant with its stump foaming. It was the second 1068 to get it. Now he was rattled. Is this how it was going to be? He'd heard the horror stories from the other growers that year. He knew some had seen their entire patch ravaged by the disease, with one plant after another going down. Not another year like that, he prayed. Other problems were cropping up. The spider mites had returned and done more damage. The hot weather had meant more-frequent watering and Ron's shallow well couldn't keep up. Then around dusk one evening, Ron was in the patch working when he heard something rustling. He looked up and saw a baby deer frolicking through the pumpkins. It jumped over two plants, then ran back out through the cheap plastic netting he'd used as a deer fence. The deer hadn't hurt the pumpkins, but Ron found several holes ripped in the fence. Obviously, his budget solution wasn't working so well. A bigger deer might do some real damage.

  Meanwhile, several other growers in the club were worried. Their pumpkins had started growing more slowly in recent days, stressed by the extreme heat. Peter Rondeau had seen his pumpkins' daily weight gains drop by 10 pounds. They were starting to pick up again, but now the forecast was predicting a cool front, with temperatures dropping into the low 50s or high 40s. That was bad. Hot weather followed by cold was the perfect prescription for splitting a pumpkin. The cold tightened up the pumpkin's skin just as it needed to stretch the most. Last year, the Wallaces lost two pumpkins after temperatures dipped into the 50s one summer night. So out came the blankets, even thought it was only the first week of August. Growers would layer the blankets on top of the pumpkins at night and not take them off until the sun was high the next morning. Ron held off watering his patch, just in case. That would help slow the growth and hopefully put less strain on the pumpkins. After that, it was just a matter of luck. And luck had never favored the Wallaces.

  Over the next few days, the foaming stump slime on the second 1068 got worse, so Ron cut the stump off that plant too. That was a real disappointment, since it was one of their better pumpkins. But the other pumpkin he was growing on a stumpless 1068 plant was still gaining weight, so he hoped for the best. "If we can just make it to the middle of August, if my other plants can stay upright, I think we can ride it home," he said.

  Now they were down to seven healthy plants, all with the potential to go over 1,300 pounds. Maybe there were even a couple of contest winners. Maybe even—why not?—a world record. If they could just hold it together. That was Ron's mantra now, every hour of every day. Just hold it together.

  "You only need one pumpkin," he said. "One is all it takes to win."

  And the Wallaces still had nine. Nine giant pumpkins growing in what six months ago had been a field of pine trees. Ron and Dick could see all the flaws with their expert eyes, but visitors saw a 7,500-square-foot garden bursting with lush, green pumpkin plants. Above the surface of the tall leaves, like boats bobbing on a sea of green, the half-moon shapes of pumpkins were rising higher every day. Now they were easily visible from the road, and attracting the attention of passersby.

  One night, as Dick sat on his front porch reading over the day's measurements, a car drove up to the house and parked on the shoulder of the road. A man jumped out and ran over to the pumpkin patch, furtively snapping a picture with his camera.

  "Then he ran like hell back to his car," Dick said, laughing.

  "All he had to do was ask."

  12

  Humpty Dumpty

  ON AUGUST 3, plant pathologist Olaf Ribeiro received a box packed with pieces of rotting pumpkin vines from Ohio grower Jerry Rose. Ribeiro ran a private laboratory at his home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, near Seattle. He was an expert in diagnosing plant diseases, and pumpkin growers hoped he would be able to figure out what was causing the foaming stump slime that was putting so many of them out of business that summer. Ribeiro had talked to Jerry and other growers on the phone in recent days and was expecting the package. "Oh my God, does my lab smell of rotting pumpkins," he complained after it arrived. In his business, though, he'd smelled worse. His lab assistant now refused to touch any package that was labeled "garlic."

  Ribeiro's work with pumpkins was the tiniest of sidelines, one that he really didn't have time for, but also that he couldn't resist. He respected the growers' novice efforts to understand complex plant science, and he was impressed by the time and effort they spent trying to get their pumpkins to grow ever larger. He'd been sucked in to the giant-pumpkin world a few years earlier by Washington grower Geneva Emmons. She'd been fighting disease in her pumpkin patch, and had heard that Ribeiro specialized in how the soil's microbial environment affected plant health. Ribeiro was skeptical about trying to help. Giant pumpkins? World records? "I hadn't ever heard of such a thing," he said.

  Ribeiro spent his time hunting down crop-destroying pathogens to save commercial farmers from ruin. Major landscaping companies and West Coast billionaires hired him to solve problems with sick or dying plants. He had no time for backyard pumpkins. Politely, he put her off. But Emmons called back, and Ribeiro agreed to look at soil samples from her garden.

  "It starts like anything else," he said. "You're curious, and then all of a sudden, you're in the middle of something that you never expected to be in the middle of." Ribeiro saw immediately that Emmons was doing several things wrong. After following his suggestions, Emmons went on to set the 2001 world record with a 1,262-pound pumpkin. She told Ribeiro that she'd spread the word that he had helped her.

  "Oh," said Ribeiro. "Great."

  Soon, the scientist's phone was ringing with pumpkin growers calling from all over the world: Europe, Japan, and South Africa, as well as North America. Ribeiro was taken aback. He had
no idea there were so many people in the world interested in growing giant pumpkins. But he understood how a person could acquire a passion for something. Ribeiro's own passion was saving trees. He had a theory that trees could live virtually forever if they were provided with the right growing conditions. The key, he believed, was the microorganisms in the dirt, which had evolved in sync with trees for hundreds of millions of years, and which were destroyed by modern farming techniques and the spread of urban civilization. Fix the dirt, save the tree.

  Ribeiro applied his philosophy about trees to giant pumpkins. "I figured if I could keep trees growing forever, why can't I help these pumpkins get to be one ton? The genetics are there. It's just a matter of doing it right."

  He'd found that the pumpkin growers weren't so different from his commercial clients—both were seeking a competitive edge that would help them succeed. But Jerry Rose's giant-pumpkin stump samples couldn't have arrived at a worse time. The pumpkin growers were in the middle of the most crucial phase of their growing season, and so were a great many commercial farmers.

  Every day, Ribeiro Plant Lab was receiving samples in the mail from farmers who were watching their tomato or potato crop succumb to some unnamed blight. Everyone, of course, needed immediate answers. He was stretched thin, working late into the night and every weekend to diagnose problems. The commercial farmers depended on getting an answer quick enough to solve the problem, save the crop, and escape financial ruin. The stakes were somewhat lower for giant-pumpkin growers. But Ribeiro could not bear to disappoint his friends in the pumpkin patch. "I'm buried with samples of citrus and chives right now, and in between I'm trying to figure out the giant pumpkins," he said, a little amazed at himself. "I guess I just like a challenge."