The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Giant o’ lantern
Man who grows some of world’s biggest pumpkins shares secrets
DURHAM — Small-town Durham made big news in 2013 when Matt DeBacco grew a 1,766.5-pound pumpkin, which not only broke the state record at the time but earned a spot among the top 10 giants in the world.
The Durham Fair’s longtime superintendent of giant pumpkins really knows his gourds.
DeBacco, 33, a science teacher at Rocky Hill High School, has been the wizard of the fair’s colossal pumpkins for 17 years — and has been gardening since he was a teen.
One would think, just like parents do of their children, he finds something to love about each of his leviathans. But he’s honest.
“I think some look absolutely horrible,” DeBacco said.
He did fall in love, however, with the 753-pounder he harvested earlier this month for the Woodstock Fair. The stunningly orange fruit now sits, covered and nestled between two hay bales, in a trailer on his property.
DeBacco said as long as he keeps it dry, this Great Pumpkin could stay in good shape until December.
“It looks like a field pumpkin — what you normally associate with Halloween — blown up to over 700 pounds. That’s very difficult to get,” Debacco said.
Debacco’s entry this year, his 1,279.5-pound monster pumpkin, was sadly “squashed” by the one grown by Joe Jutras from North Scituate, R.I. Jutras can lay claim to growing the second-heaviest squash — a green one — in the world this year, weighing in at a whopping 1,701 pounds.
His entry also took first place at the Durham Fair and can be viewed at the fairgrounds all weekend.
Debacco’s focus now is breeding the perfect rich, orange hue. “I’m growing certain genetic lines to keep track of the shape and keep the color going,” he said. DeBacco has one that is “as white as a white sheet. Another is super white and cracking, and it looks almost textured, almost like a cantaloupe.”
It’s not very pretty because they’re bred for thickness and size, he said. “That’s so they look better, because otherwise, you’re like, ‘What IS that?’”
His pumpkin seedlings went in the ground on Easter Sunday, and after they were pollinated, “you can see little golf balls around the end of June,” said Debacco, who harvests his mammoths right before weigh-offs at the fairgrounds.
Debacco holds an undergraduate degree in agronomy from the University of Connecticut and a master’s in pathobiology and horticulture, with a minor in molecular and cell biology. Last summer, he worked as a vegetable production consultant, scouting for farms on a large scale, he said, for things such as disease diagnosis.
“It’s a challenge to beat myself,” Debacco said. “I try to push the limits and when I push too far, I learn where that fine line is. It’s not 100 percent easy — that’s what discourages people,” he said. “If you want something easy, grow tomatoes.”
And DeBacco does. Because his tomato plants are in his pumpkin patch, they explode in size, some becoming as big as a child’s soccer ball.
DeBacco grows six giant pumpkins every year in his 6,000-square-foot backyard garden. This year was a particularly good one, he said, as usually his harvest is only three of the gourds. Many are lost to cracking or splitting open.
On Thursday afternoon, DeBacco and his father, Jim, hoisted a multicolored pumpkin onto a handcranked gear winch attached to a giant tripod. The pumpkin clocked in at 1,222.6 pounds, well over the 1,000 pounds that a pumpkin its size should weigh. DeBacco breeds his for, among other things, a bright orange color, something not many farmers are able to achieve, he said.
“I think it’s exciting we have the second-heaviest green squash in the world right here at our Durham Fair,” said Huscher,
This year’s second largest pumpkin weighs more than 1,600 pounds, she said.
“Two years ago, there was a 5-year-old boy who entered the giant pumpkin contest and his weighed 400 pounds,” said Debbie Huscher, marketing coordinator for the Durham Fair. “It inspires future pumpkin growers, and Matt does an amazing job from educational perspective.”
DeBacco said his trips to fairs with his Gulliver-sized pumpkins can be pretty nutty at times.
“People in other cars take pictures along the highway as I’m driving to the weighoff,” he said. “You know you’re making an impact when people on the highway are slowing down and driving at your 55 to 60 mph speed and then speeding up well above 65. It turns quite a few heads.”
This year, DeBacco sent his gourds to the Marshfield Fair in Massachusetts, and in Connecticut, the Woodstock Fair and the Durham Fair; two other of his lovelies will go to Vermont and Rhode Island competitions.
Winning can be very lucrative. The Durham Fair’s first-, second- and third-place awards pay $1,500, $1,000 and $750 prizes, respectively.
Sometimes the giant pumpkin business can be perplexing, too. “Growers, we don’t understand why people keep asking, ‘Do you milk feed them?’ Of course we don’t. We don’t know who started that but someone seems to have started that,” DeBacco said.
Other times, people will ask a question and “when we tell them the answer, they don’t believe us,” he said.
He has everything automated that he can: water and fertilizer on a timer with a rain sensor. His prizes are protected by two electric fences set in the ground to keep out the squirrels and woodchucks.
Those safeguards help him usher these babies into the world.
“They naturally grow quickly, however it’s genetic selection because there’s a certain point that they can grow too fast and can split and turn themselves open,” DeBacco said. “That’s the problem.
“We want to play that delicate line of growing as quickly as possible but not ripping themselves apart,” he said of his pumpkins. “They are simply very efficient at moving water. That’s what allows them to grow so quickly.”
Each sucks up 100 gallons of water a day and these whoppers grow a pound an hour, DeBacco said. Not surprisingly, his water bill more than doubles in season.
“You go to work and come back eight hours later, and it’s bigger. A typical carving pumpkin is usually 18 to 20 pounds. That what these giants are putting on every day of their life,” DeBacco said.
The Durham Fair runs daily through Sunday at the Durham Fairgrounds at 70 Maple Ave. For hours, musical acts, admission prices and other information, see durhamfair.com or the Durham Fair on Facebook.