Backyard Giants Page 19

  And the foaming stump slime was intriguing. He had received several calls from panicked East Coast growers, while none of the West Coast growers seemed to be having the problem. A few, including Rose and at least one other Ohio grower, had sent in samples for testing. Ribeiro concluded that the hot, wet weather in the East, combined with the supernatural growth of these giants, was straining the pumpkins' systems to the limit, putting the plants under so much stress that they were vulnerable to disease that they might ordinarily be able to fight off. "Disease is opportunistic," he explained to the growers when they called. "It attacks a plant that's weakened."

  Ribeiro believed pumpkin growers were victims of their own enthusiasm. They watered too much and tilled too much and fertilized too much, upsetting the natural balance of the soil. Unwittingly, they wound up creating a microenvironment that inhibited the good kind of bacteria and fungi, and encouraged the growth of bad microbes that cause disease. Meanwhile, the plants already were under huge stress as they strained to grow unnaturally large fruit. When the plant began to show signs of a problem, the growers typically rushed in with a grab bag of fungicides and fertilizers and wound up killing off more of the good guys and feeding the bad guys. "They create a monster," Ribeiro said. It was just this kind of vicious cycle that had plagued the Wallaces' pumpkins through the years.

  It frustrated Ribeiro, who had found that pumpkin growers would often discard his advice when they didn't see immediate results and go back to carpet-bombing the pumpkins with chemicals. "They don't understand that it's a patience game," he said. "This is science. You don't fly by the seat of your pants."

  But Ribeiro also realized the pumpkin growers' panic was driven by the fact that there was only a limited amount of time in the season. One lost week of growth could put an end to a whole year's worth of hard work and dreams. So when Jerry Rose's diseased pumpkin samples arrived, Ribeiro set aside his other jobs and worked until midnight preparing tests that would help him isolate any bacteria or fungi growing in the plant.

  Within a couple of days, he'd identified several nasty actors at work on the vines, which were teeming with a combination of harmful fungus and bacteria. Among other things, he isolated Colletotrichum, a fungus that usually causes black splotches on leaves. In Rose's sample, Ribeiro found that "fruiting bodies of this fungus were profuse up and down the stem." He also detected the bacterium Pseudomonas at work. "This has caused the stems to turn mushy." And in a sample from another Ohio grower, Ribeiro detected the notorious Fusarium.

  All of these were made worse with an excess of nitrogen or moisture in the soil, he noted. He reported his findings to the growers and recommended a combination of fungicide treatments, as well as some organic controls.

  "Let's hope we can turn it around in time," he said.

  The disease, meanwhile, continued to boil up in other growers' patches. Dave Stelts walked into his Pennsylvania garden one morning to find three of his plants foaming, including the star of his patch, his 1068. To try to save them, he amputated the stumps and ripped out the diseased part of the vines, leaving about half the plant to support the pumpkins. They were still growing, though more slowly.

  In Rhode Island, Peter Rondeau was battling the slime too. He'd had his wife and daughters e-mail him pictures of his plants while he was out of town for four days working in New York. They'd reported that he had a few leaves wilting on one of his plants. Not good, he thought, but he wasn't too worried. When he got home, though, he found the stump and part of the vine had rotted through. It was "mush mush mush mush mush," he said. At least it was his little orange pumpkin plant that was infected, not his 1068. The 1068 had measured an estimated 500 pounds at the beginning of August, then had slowed down after the heat wave, but was still growing more than 20 pounds a day in mid-August.

  "This is not a sport for the weak of heart," Peter said. "You never know what can happen at any given time—it could be a storm, it could be hail, it could be a disease. Who the hell knows?"

  Early on Saturday, August 19, Steve Connolly and Joe Jutras made the three-hour drive north from Rhode Island for the New Hampshire Giant Pumpkin Growers Association patch tour and picnic. It was a neighborly gesture of support, but also a chance to see how one of their archrivals was measuring up so far that year. The 100 or so tour members traveled on two rented school buses, which pulled to a stop in the parking lot of His Mansion Ministries in Hillsboro about 10:30 A.M. Joe and Steve descended from their bus to the fairy-tale spectacle of 20 enormous pumpkins in shades of cream and orange rising above a field of spreading green leaves. This was Jim Ford's patch. It covered an acre of ground amid a complex of sheds and barns and auxiliary buildings at the residential Christian rehabilitation center where he worked as the agricultural supervisor. Ford oversaw the vegetable and fruit gardens that provided therapy for the center's residents and food for their table. And while he was at it, he grew a lot of giant pumpkins.

  As the guests spread out to survey the patch, classical melodies streamed from two speakers attached to a barn flanking one side. The music wasn't for the guests. "Everything's for the pumpkins," Ford said. He'd heard that plants do better when accompanied by music. In fact, a lot of growers liked to broadcast to their pumpkin patches, including the Wallaces. But while most favored soothing symphonic tones, the Wallace pumpkins grew to the sounds of Van Morrison, Billy Joel, and the Rolling Stones.

  Steve strolled the perimeter of Ford's garden, his tan Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers T-shirt tucked into a pair of white cargo shorts, a small digital camera slung over his shoulder. He studied the signs noting the pollination dates and estimated weight of each pumpkin. Ford's pumpkin patch was doing exceptionally well. There were some definite world-record con tenders there; pumpkins that, if they kept going, had the potential to reach 1,500 pounds and beyond. There was one that already had topped 900 pounds and another at 850 pounds that was still growing 30 pounds a day, when most growers were lucky to see 20. Steve pulled a small notebook out of his pocket—his portable record of all his pumpkins' vital statistics. His best contender was growing about 23 pounds a day. That wasn't as good as Ford's, but still not bad. At that time of year, with summer waning, growers were losing about three minutes of sun a day. "That's about half an hour a week, which, of course, is less growing time," Steve explained.

  Ford was having his own problems, though. In the past week he had dug out more than 200 squash vine borers from the plants, using a pocketknife to slice into the vines, harpoon the fat grubs, and pull them out. Steve preferred to go after the borers with one of his wife's sewing needles. He'd sterilize it with alcohol, then poke it into the vine where the larvae were feasting, piercing them through. "I just let them die right inside the vine," Steve said. It was less traumatic for the plant that way, he believed. He called the technique "MIS"—minimally invasive surgery.

  All growers attend patch tours with their own pumpkins in the back of their mind. It is a pumpkin growers' fate to worry. And perhaps the toughest worry to come to terms with is that they may not be doing something as well as another grower; that it wouldn't be rotten luck or Mother Nature that beat them, but their own bad judgment. Now, as Steve studied Ford's pumpkins and listened to Ford talk, doubts were creeping in. Steve had been watering his pumpkins every other day. He wanted to give the pumpkins plenty of water, but he feared getting them too wet and contributing to more disease. Here at the Ford patch, he heard something different. Ford watered every day—hundreds of gallons of water, every day. And it was working well for him. Steve was staring at the proof. Ford's pumpkins were growing bigger and faster than his.

  Steve climbed back aboard the yellow school bus and took a seat next to the window. As the diesel engine roared to life and the bus pulled out of the parking lot, Steve made small talk with the other passengers, raising his soft voice to be heard above the sound of tires crunching across the gravel. But in a few minutes he fell silent and stared out the window, his mind a hundred miles away back at
his own patch. His hand twitched at his side, reaching for the cell phone clipped to his belt. He undipped the phone and held it in his hand, turning it over and staring at it, thinking. He opened the clamshell. Closed it. He bounced the phone gently in his hand as if weighing it, weighing his decision. "No," he said quietly to himself. And then more firmly: "No."

  Steve clipped the phone back on his belt and suddenly seemed quite sure of himself. "You know," he said, "The biggest mistake a grower can make is changing course in the middle of the season. They'll go to someone's house, see someone's pumpkins that seem to be doing well, and hear that they're doing something different that seems to be working. So then they'll rush home and try it. And it'll shock the plant. And the next thing they know, their pumpkin has split or something else has gone wrong."

  He delivered this speech with the conviction of a man who knew that particular demon well. Steve had just come this close—this close—to urgently calling home to ask his wife to start the sprinklers, even though the plants weren't due to be watered until the next day.

  He'd managed to stop himself from making the call, but the thought nagged him for the rest of the tour, and he was still thinking about it as the bus headed back to New Hampshire grower Jim Beauchemin's house for a barbecue lunch. Beauchemin owned a landscaping company, and his house sat at the top of a hill surrounded by lushly landscaped grounds. Near the bottom, next to a pond, was Jim's pumpkin patch. He was hosting the tour picnic, as usual. The centerpiece of the meal was a whole pig roasted over coals in a giant barbecue pit. Tour members lined up to fill their plates and find a seat beneath the white canvas canopies set up to deflect rain and sun.

  One grower, Ed Hemphill, carried a paper plate laden with roast pork, potato salad, and coleslaw to one of the long plastic tables arranged across Beauchemin's front lawn. Steve Connolly sat down across from Hemphill. There had been whispers buzzing through the tour all day about the Hemphill pumpkin. Almost no body had heard of Ed Hemphill before that day. But rumor had it that the man had a massive fruit growing back at his home in New Brunswick, Canada—one bigger than anything else anyone had heard about that season. Hemphill was a tall, lean, 69-year-old with a leathery brown face. Large ears jutted from a head full of bristling dark brown hair cut short and flat on top. Only a smudge of gray showed at his temples, but his brow and mouth were etched with the deeply carved lines of a man who had spent a lifetime outdoors.

  This was Hemphill's first time at the New Hampshire patch tour. He'd come with his live-in partner, Joan Kent, and the couple had kept mostly to themselves, standing apart like awkward strangers in the crowd of growers. Hemphill had the eager shyness of a man who finally had something to brag about, yet didn't want to make too much of it. He didn't even like saying how big his pumpkin had grown. But when Steve pressed him as they sat across from each other at lunch, he opened up. "More than eleven hundred pounds. I taped it just this morning," Hemphill said with a curt little nod of satisfaction. "And it's still growing twenty-three pounds a day."

  Hemphill was as excited as a youngster. He'd tried something new that year, and it seemed to be working out. Since weight was all that counted at the end of the season, Ed had decided to weigh his baby pumpkins when they were a couple of weeks old to help him decide which one to keep on the plant. He put them on a scale right on the vine, then he compared the estimated weight to the actual weight, and kept the pumpkin on each vine that weighed the heaviest compared to its OTT measurements. "I'm an old man. I don't have time to grow 'em big, so I've got to grow 'em heavy," he said, his words rising and falling in a lilting Canadian cadence.

  "I'd like to grow the world champion," Hemphill said, chuckling at what he knew must sound like an old man's pie-in-the-sky dream. "I was told I was in too cold a country to do it. But I'm on my way." Undoubtedly, he was, if his measurements were accurate. The weigh-off was still seven weeks away, plenty of time to get to 1,500 pounds, especially if the pumpkin was still growing more than 20 pounds a day.

  Hemphill had started growing giant pumpkins after he was diagnosed with cancer in 1995. His doctor told him to put his affairs in order. He wasn't expected to live for long. "I've always said, 'You're going to die one way or another, so there's no use sitting and worrying about it,' " Hemphill said.

  He'd looked around for something useful to do to keep his mind off his troubles, and he decided to grow potatoes. When the first crop of potatoes were ready to harvest, he loaded them into the trunk of his car and delivered them around to people he knew. He developed a weekly route. "Every Tuesday evening, they knew I was coming. It took all evening to deliver them, because I like to talk."

  Hemphill confounded his doctors that year by not dying. Not that year and not the next. During his 2006 checkup in February, his doctor told him, "I don't know why you're still living, but the cancer isn't going to kill you now."

  Hemphill thinks the potatoes saved his life. "I've seen people, as soon as they heard they had cancer, they faded right away just like a rotten pumpkin," he said. But when he was working in the garden, "I couldn't care less if I was going to live six months or six years," he said. "Every day is a plus for me now."

  The year after he grew his potatoes, he decided to try giant pumpkins. He got hooked, and he'd been growing them ever since. In 2005, he'd taken third place with an 1,171-pounder at a weigh-off in Windsor, Nova Scotia. That put him on the map of big Canadian growers, but he was still a nobody in the United States. He had trouble getting the top seeds he wanted. "The Americans never e-mail me or call me back," he said. He'd asked the Wallaces for a 1068 seed over the winter—"I almost begged them for one"—but Ron had turned him down. Then, just before planting time that spring, the seed had arrived in the mail. Hemphill had a decent pumpkin growing on his 1068, but that wasn't his big one. His big one was growing on a seed he'd gotten from Jim Beauchemin.

  One of the reasons Hemphill had come down to New Hampshire was to talk to growers and get their advice. His main strategy now was to keep the pumpkins heavily watered. Steve Connolly paid extra attention when Hemphill talked about that. "You gotta have lots of water to grow these beasts," Hemphill said. "I'd rather weigh a wet pumpkin. It's heavier than a dry one."

  Steve excused himself from the table and joined a group talking with Larry and Gerry Checkon. The Checkons had been invited as special guests at the tour. All day Larry had been surrounded by growers seeking the wisdom of the world champion. Now someone asked, "How often do you water?"

  "Every day," Larry said. "We water every day."

  That did it for Steve. He backed away and grabbed his cell phone and dialed home. No one answered, but Steve wasn't about to let that stop him. Now that he'd made up his mind, he wanted to get the sprinklers going on his pumpkins and to get them going now. He called his next-door neighbor, who was Pakistani and had a weak command of English. "You want me to do what?" the puzzled man asked. Finally, Steve was able to explain what he needed, and the neighbor agreed to take care of it. Steve snapped his cell phone shut with a sheepish grin.

  As the days of August unfolded, as thousands of giant pumpkins in backyards across the world gorged on nutrient-fat soils and siphoned up thousands of gallons of water, as shells creaked and groaned and bulged and swelled with unnatural swiftness, a wail of anguish rose. The pumpkins were beginning to blow.

  "These pumpkins, they really know how to hurt us," a grower wrote on BigPumpkins.com. The ones you love most are the ones that can hurt you worst—and that was no less true in the pumpkin patch. In early August, world-record contenders were a dime a dozen. But it was the biggest and fastest-growing pumpkins, the ones that inspired dreams of glory, that were usually the first to go.

  Every competitive grower has a story of the one that got away. Some stories were more painful than others. In 2003, New Hampshire grower Bruce Whittier had a pumpkin estimated to be 1,250 pounds when it blew a small hole in its blossom end, on August 23. The hole went all the way through to the cavity, so it disqualified the pumpk
in from competition. But growers sometimes have a hard time letting go. Whittier patched the hole with grafting wax to see if the pumpkin would keep growing. When it split again on September 7, he took it off the vine and weighed it on an official scale—it was 1,458 pounds. It was the biggest pumpkin ever grown at that point, far bigger than the 1,385-pound pumpkin that set the official new world record that year. In fact, it would have beaten the 2004 world record of 1,446 too. But the rules say a damaged pumpkin doesn't count.

  Growers console each other with misery-loves-company bravado. "If you're not blowin' 'em, you're not growin' 'em," they say. There was a certain prestige in suffering heartbreak in the garden and then coming back for more the next year. One of Jim Beauchemin's pumpkins had split just days before he hosted the New Hampshire tour. He left it on the vine as a reminder of the odds facing anyone who tried to grow the giants. Growers filed past, nodding in somber recognition at the yellow carcass still sheltered under its plastic hoop tent. The pumpkin looked perfect from every angle except one: the blossom end gaped open with a split 10 inches long and nearly 3 inches wide.

  Cracks can show up anywhere on a pumpkin, but the most vulnerable places are the blossom end, where the flower once grew atop the baby fruit, and the stem end, where it is attached to the vine. Giant pumpkins also have a peculiar habit of forming "sag lines"—cracks that split their internal walls but don't always break through the skin. Sag lines were thought to be a legacy of the genetic tinkering that produced Howard Dill's Atlantic Giant, so the defects were also referred to as "Dill rings." But most growers now called them sag lines, which was more descriptive of the deep crevices that would develop across the pumpkin where it was splitting internally. From the outside it looks as if a belt has been cinched around the pumpkin, squeezing it in. These indentations were greatly feared among growers, as they indicated a weak point where a pumpkin might split—and many often did.