These Midwesterners raise giant pumpkins

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Mediaa collaboration between public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

Written by Peter Medlin | Harvest Public Media

Joe Adkins calls his house “The Pumpkin House.”

Its front door and shutters were painted orange. The dining room walls are decorated with decorative pumpkin paintings.

But the backyard garden behind his home in the Chicago suburbs is where The Pumpkin House truly earned its name. Several huge orange pumpkins, the size of a small car, rise above a chrome cover.

“I grow the ones that are less than a pound all the way up until they’re worth a few thousand pounds,” he said.

Adkins is a member of a thriving global community of giant pumpkin growers.

These hobby gardeners often work in their patches for hours a day to grow the heaviest pumpkins possible. They do it for the love of growing, for the smile that pumpkins put on people’s faces, and even for the elite – even a little money.

Adkins has won a race Illinois Giant Pumpkin Growers Association Annual weigh-in – along with a $1,000 cash prize – for several years in a row. Last year, he also achieved a personal milestone: his first 2,000-pound pumpkin.

He’s always loved pumpkins, but it was pumpkin carving that drew him to the world of growing giant pumpkins — he just wanted a bigger canvas.

“I wanted to carve these big pumpkins like this, and I couldn’t find them anywhere to buy them, so I thought, well, let me try it. I’ll try to grow one, and then I can carve them this way,” he said. “And I couldn’t believe how much I loved growing those pumpkins.”

People don’t grow them to make giant pumpkin pie. These “Atlantic giants” are a different variety from the field squash used in pies and purees.

This year, three giants are growing in Adkin’s backyard. It doesn’t look like a typical lantern pumpkin. These giant, bright orange creatures are not round, but rather rectangular in shape and flattened on the bottom as they try to support their weight.

The three are looking for at least a thousand pounds.

The largest pumpkin in the world

Growing a giant pumpkin patch requires a lot of work year-round. Adkins sprays fungicide, prunes, buries the vines, and sets up fans to stop moisture and rot.

During the summer growing season when pumpkins can weigh more than 50 pounds in a single day, caring for these giant creatures is essentially a full-time job.

“It’s literally four or five hours a day,” Adkins said. “I have a schedule on Sunday and Tuesday, where I spend about eight hours, and the rest of the days, I have to spend at least two to four hours.”

Growers like Adkins have been honing their craft for years, hoping that one day they can get the perfect combination of the best seeds in the best soil in the best weather and land a white whale: a world-record pumpkin.

Minnesota horticulture teacher Travis Ginger has been chasing that dream since he was a teenager. At 15, he was shot.

“I hope to set the world record for largest pumpkin one day,” Ginger, a fresh-faced teenager, said in a school presentation captured on video from decades ago and posted on the website. His YouTube channel. “It may not happen, but I hope it does.”

In 2023, he took a trailer and transported his giant pumpkin to Half Moon Bay, California. Set a world record With a staggering 2,749 lbs pumpkin.

When he started, the record was 700 or 800 pounds, Ginger says. It has tripled since then and has not slowed down.

“It got kind of crazy,” Ginger said. “Now a new farmer can grow 2,000 pounds, no problem. It takes a lot of work, don’t get me wrong, but the Internet world has pushed this thing pretty far.”

People continue to grow pumpkins larger and denser than ever before. Ginger expects growers to reach a new milestone in the next decade: 4,000 lbs.

The science behind giant pumpkins

As records are broken, giant pumpkin technology and techniques become more advanced.

Growers can spend hundreds of dollars for just one seed from an award-winning champion. Some grow these pumpkins on scales inside climate-controlled greenhouses that are connected to sensors.

Ginger has been teaching soil classes and has been growing giant pumpkins for decades. He has some special techniques, like mixing microbes into the soil to help the squash absorb nutrients, but he doesn’t see himself as a high-tech farmer.

“I’m probably the least scientific person you’ll ever meet,” Ginger said. “I look at my plants and say, ‘Hey, they need this, this or that,’ and then I go, and I’ll figure out what I want to do. Then I’ll rinse and repeat the next year.”

His patch is outside; You won’t find any climate controls. But something was clearly working, he set the world record, after all.

It helps to have Ginger in Minnesota, where the climate, sunshine and humidity are ideal for growing pumpkins.

But even with his experience and knowledge, growing outside brings a host of unpredictable factors, especially weather. An unusual warm spell or early frost can spell disaster for pumpkins.

There are also bacterial diseases to worry about, not to mention rot. In fact, Ginger didn’t have a chance to defend the world championship this year, because he lost his main pumpkin to internal rot that started as a small hole in the flower end of the plant.

Giant pumpkins have gone global

While many may think of pumpkins as an American pastime, Ginger says technological innovation has come mainly from European farmers.

“Right now, it’s the guys out there kicking their butts in the greenhouses,” he said.

Ginger knew it was only a matter of time until someone would break his record, and that happened on October 4, when two English brothers broke his record. He grew to be a giant, weighing 2,819 pounds.

Growing giant pumpkins is global, and Ginger has spread all over the world.

“I visited Spain, Belgium and France with a group of farmers,” he said. “Krebs, today I am sending seeds to Australia and South Africa.”

Most people don’t make money growing pumpkins. If you’re lucky, like Joe Adkins at Illinois, you might be able to break even. But for elite farmers like Ginger, raising giant pumpkins can be profitable.

He says he can make up to $10,000 a year from seed sales. That doesn’t include prize money from winning weight competitions, like the $30,000 he received for setting the world record in 2023. Even after competing, you can sell your championship pumpkin for another $10,000, Ginger says.

The hobby itself is also growing. There are festivals and giant pumpkin pies all over the country.

Dale Faust is president Giant pumpkin growers in wisconsin. He says their group has doubled in size to 200 members since he joined in 2012. They send seeds to members, organize patch-ups, and weigh in.

It also recently hosted Wisconsin International Farmers’ Conference.

“We made a lot of friends all over Wisconsin and the world,” Faust said. “Last year’s global (conference) was held in Green Bay at Lambeau Field, so people came from all over the world to learn more about growing giant pumpkins.”

Can giant pumpkins float?

The Upper Midwest is a great place to grow pumpkins, but these giant plants grow all over the United States. Steve Quinney is a farmer from southern Missouri where he knows that, because of the climate, he will never break the world weight record.

“It’s so hot. I mean, I put shade cloth over my pumpkins. They spend half the day in the shade of the trees, and I’ll still get sunburn and a number of problems,” Queenie said.

After trying to grow a few pumpkins on his own, the internet connected him to the giant pumpkin community in 2020 where he got some good advice and, more importantly, good seeds. In one year, he went from growing 100-pound pumpkins to 1,000 pounds.

He may not be growing the world’s largest pumpkin, but Queenie has set a giant world record of a different kind.

A few years ago, he planted a pumpkin weighing more than 1,200 pounds, cut a hole in the top, hollowed it out, climbed in, and dropped it into the Missouri River. Queenie then He set a Guinness World Record For the longest paddleboarding trip in a pumpkin boat.

“We just set out about two years ago, went up to Kansas City, stopped at Cobb Point Park, and drove 38 miles down the river,” he said. “Pumpkins are very thriving.”

After the trip, Queenie thought the pumpkin would make excellent food for the fish. He tried carving it up, but the giant pumpkin’s flesh can be nearly a foot thick at some points, which proved difficult to carve. So, instead, he says they hit her twice with a pontoon boat and sank her to the bottom of the Missouri River.

Illinois weight

In mid-September, Joe Adkins strapped his giant pumpkin to the back of a trailer and drove it to Heap’s Giant Pumpkin Farm in Minooka, Illinois, hoping to defend his title against dozens of other farmers.

A few newbies showed up with pumpkins, and were greeted enthusiastically by the other growers, quick to offer advice and encouragement.

“We’ll get you some seeds! Once the season is over, we’ll reach out and get some seeds,” Mark Morlas told a new farmer approaching the tent. The newcomer wears a Batman-esque belt decorated with small pumpkins.

Morlas works with the Illinois Association and International Governing Body The Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. He says this is often the only time of year when everyone gets together, so farmers follow and share advice. It’s friendly, but competitive.

The weight is mostly a giant pumpkin display, but there are other categories. They give out prizes for the largest pumpkins, gourds, long pumpkins, watermelons, and more.

But the Giants are the main attraction. The 1,500-pound pumpkin was tipping the scales during the afternoon, but it’s back to the last pumpkin that belonged to Adkins. The weight to be overcome is 1,882.

As the crowd held their breath, the pumpkin rope caught hold of a forklift and gently lifted the giant pumpkin into the sky before lowering it onto an oversized scale.

“Two thousand and twenty-six pounds!” shouted the announcer as the crowd erupted in cheers. Adkins shouted and pumped his fist. Not only did his pumpkin win the weight, it also beat his own personal record by just five pounds.

After the competition, Adkins loaded the prize winner onto the trailer to take home.

He plans to carve them at Halloween and distribute the seeds to trick-or-treaters, hoping to inspire the next generation of giant pumpkin growers.