newspaper article
____________________Forward Header_____________________
Subject: Boston Globe Online / Northwest Weekly / All the world's a p
Author: Glenn Peters <gpeters@ll.mit.edu>
Date: 9/20/1999 9:01 AM
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/262/northwest/All_the_world_s_a_pumpkin_for_so
me_a_gigantic_one+.shtml
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<wire_Hertz>Not everybody had problems with the drought this year. Some folks at the Marshfield Fair were even grateful.</wire_Hertz>
<wire_pg>24</wire_pg>
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<wire_column>GARDEN PATHWAYS</wire_column>
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<wire_header>All the world's a pumpkin for some - a gigantic one</wire_header>
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<wire_source>By Steve Hatch, Globe Staff</wire_source>
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<wire_Hertz>Not everybody had problems with the drought this year. Some folks at the Marshfield Fair were even grateful.</wire_Hertz>
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<title>Boston Globe Online / Northwest Weekly / All the world's a pumpkin for some - a gigantic one</title>
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<font size=-1><b>GARDEN PATHWAYS</b></font><br>
<wire_header>
<font size=+2><b>All the world's a pumpkin for some - a gigantic one</b></font>
</wire_header>
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<wire_source>
<font size=-1>
<b>By Steve Hatch, Globe Staff, 09/19/99</b>
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<wire_body> <P><img src=http://graphics.boston.com/globe/images/dropcaps/N.gif align=left>ot everybody had problems with the drought this year. Some folks at the Marshfield Fair were even grateful.<P>
<P>''This was a big year for us,'' Raymond McKay explained. ''The growing season was ahead of schedule, with all the sun we've had.'' <P>
<P>I had called after wondering at the giant pumpkins on display at the fair last month, and McKay is in charge of the annual contest. Those giants, topped by a 650-pound monster grown by James Kuhn of Goffstown, N.H., normally would have gone to later fairs, but not this parched season.<P>
<P>Kuhn's behemoth topped the Marshfield record by 184 pounds and put Marshfield's pumpkin contest squarely in the big leagues, at least for one year. Kuhn showed up with a neighbor, John Gireus of Derry, N.H., who brought a 705-pounder that was disqualified because of a hole, but Gireus just wanted to know how much it weighed. These aren't things you can heft onto a bathroom scale. <P>
<P>''Growing giant pumpkins is serious business,'' McKay told me. ''If you can't spend six or eight hours a week with your pumpkin, you can't grow a big one.''<P>
<P>Plenty of people are doing just that, perhaps as many as 15,000 worldwide, according to Don Langevin of Norton, a giant-pumpkin-growing guru, author of two popular books on the subject, ''How-to-Grow World Class Giant Pumpkins,'' volumes I and II.<P>
<P>Langevin is dedicated to spreading the word, and second prize at Marshfield went to a neighbor, Tim Donovan, a Norton veterinarian whose son became entranced by the giants Langevin was growing and took it up in a quest for a Boy Scout merit badge four years ago. Scott Donovan, now 14, got the badge, growing a 250-pounder for the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield. This year Scott placed second in the Southeastern Massachusetts division at the Marshfield Fair with a 287-pound cucurbit.<P>
<P>His dad got the bug big time, though, leading to his 595-pound Marshfield entry. His 48-by-44-foot pumpkin patch accommodates three plants, ''and that's tight,'' he said. Each plant was allowed to send out two vines, each with a pumpkin. Pruning is intensive - ''if I planted one plant in that garden and didn't prune it, it would fill that garden'' - and purposeful: Too many branches and leaves reduce the size of the pumpkin, and tertiary branches simply are not allowed. The whole thing winds up looking like a flattened Christmas tree.<P>
<P>Tim Donovan's personal best was 676 pounds, only good enough for 10th place at the All New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-off at the Topsfield Fair, the premier event in our region. Despite the early crop, he has some headed for Topsfield, if weather and luck hold. ''I have a dark horse in the garden,'' he said. ''The advantage to having three plants is you have a little bit of flexibility.''<P>
<P>And moving the pumpkins? ''The usual method for picking these things up is to get a bunch of men,'' Donovan said. ''They make tarps with handles on them for lifting these things.''<P>
<P>Donovan learned about growing competition-size giant pumpkins from his neighbor, Langevin. ''It was Hurricane Bertha, and I couldn't do anything else, so I read the book.''<P>
<P>Up in New Hampshire, James Kuhn credits the hurricane with bringing the aphids he never had to contend with before. He has spent this summer watering and battling bugs, especially the stink bug, but those aphids are tiny and hard to spot. <P>
<P>Kuhn holds the New England record, 929.4 pounds, weighed in Topsfield in 1997 (the world record is 1,092 pounds), but he does not expect to challenge that this year. ''I may go, but my biggest pumpkin split on me when we had the rain about two weeks ago,'' he told me. <P>
<P>Kuhn, who took up this hobby, called a sport by some, in 1992, said there seems to be a cycle. Seed will produce 500-pounders one year, that seed will produce 900-pounders the next, and the next generation bounces back down to 500 pounds.<P>
<P>''You need a combination of luck, the right seed, and the weather,'' Kuhn said.<P>
<P>Langevin agrees.<P>
<P>''There's no reason you can't grow a world-record-holder the first year you grow a giant pumpkin - if you're lucky,'' he said. Being a gardener can help, as can reading his books, but luck is a big factor, Langevin said. Another big factor is the strain of seed: Dill's Atlantic Giant, developed by Howard Dill of Nova Scotia, where giant pumpkin contests have been a part of country life for a long time. Dill spent 30 years developing this strain.<P>
<P>The sport is growing, in no small part due to Langevin's books. He has sold 12,000 copies of the first book, 5,000 of the second, and they are increasingly available through mail-order seed companies such as Johnny's Seeds (or call Langevin at 1-800-985-7878 or write Pumpkins, Box 247, Norton 02766). <P>
<P>''I'd say 10 years ago, probably fewer than 1,000 people in the world were growing Atlantic giants and competing with Atlantic giants,'' Langevin said. Now there are 200 to 300 weigh-offs each year, and three umbrella organizations - the World Pumpkin Confederation, the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth and the International Pumpkin Association. (It almost sounds like boxing, except pounds are pounds, and there's no need to unify the title.)<P>
<P>`I've been a gardener all my life, and that's the case with most people,'' Langevin said. People just get hooked. ''You can go out every day at the end of July and throw a tape measure around a giant pumpkin and find it has grown 6 or 7 inches,'' he said. Vines can grow 2 feet in a day, and a plant in a 4-inch peat pot that goes in the garden in early May can fill 1,000 square feet in July.<P>
<P>And what do you do with the pumpkins? Well, the seed you save or sell or trade. ''You can't eat them,'' Tim Donovan said. Two years ago, he found another use. He carved a biggie into a Cinderella carriage and stuck his 5-year-old daughter in it. Magical.<P>
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