Growers weigh in on great pumpkins
It might have served as a row of Jersey-barriers , this phalanx of pumpkins waiting to be weighed.
Each boulder-like mass made its slow way to the industrial-strength scales Saturday at Sam Mazza’s Farm Market in Colchester, toted in a sling by a forklift.
Spectators at the Vermont Giant Pumpkin Growers Association Annual Weigh-off cheered each fresh entry, regardless of its girth. Orange hats were everywhere, as were orange t-shirts, water-bottles, ear rings and fingernails.
Top bragging rights (1,435 lbs.) went to Matt DeBacco of Rocky Hill, Conn.; followed by Wendy Paterson of Castleton (1,315 lbs.) and Dale Duffy of Fairfax (1,256 lbs).
DeBacco said he popped his prizewinner into the ground, on “non-rocky part of Rocky Hill” on Easter Sunday, in April. He babied it with heating cables through the region’s cold spring.
“In June, when I came out of the cold frame, I got hit with hail. All my plants were pretty well beat up,” he continued. “It destroyed all my umbrellas I had had out to protect them from the hot sun. It set the plants back quite a ways.”
After cutting his plant from the vine on Friday, DeBacco popped the stem onto a water jug.
“It drank about a gallon and a half since when I picked it since this morning,” he said. “The goal is not to lose any weight. Every pound, every ounce counts.”
So does dedication, added DeBacco, who is a part-time extension agent for field crops and full-time high school biology and chemistry teacher.
“I’ve been growing these things for the past 17 years,” he said. “The goal is to learn something every year.”
Sharon Morrison of Whitehall, N.Y., estimated that a single giant pumpkin plant requires about 100 gallons “for every day that it’s not raining.”
Second-place pumpkin-grower Patterson agreed that adequate moisture is key to a plant’s putting on weight.
Soil and plant-tissue tests in advance of the growing season yield important clues on what mineral elements might be needed to maximize nutrition, she added.