Growing for the gold
Local pumpkin grower looks to raise giants
GENTRY — How many pies can you make from a 454-pound pumpkin? Let’s just say — if the pumpkin variety were suitable for pie-making — a lot!
But the giant pumpkin, carefully nurtured and grown by Melissa Bond of Highfill, is not for pie-making. It has another purpose in store: being weighed and entered in the Benton County Fair. Bond is hopeful she’ll win a ribbon for the giant pumpkin she’s lovingly named “Rosie,” but she knows there’s a possibility someone has grown one that is even bigger.
The state record is 691 pounds, she said. And, the national record was set in 2018 by a New Hampshire man who grew a 2,528-pound giant, still short of the 2,624-pound pumpkin grown in 2016 by a man in Belgium, according to Guinness World Records.
According to Bond, some Oklahoma growers have grown 2,000-pound pumpkins.
This is Bond’s fifth year growing pumpkins and her first year growing giants — she has a second giant pumpkin she estimates at about 253 pounds. She also grows other plots of pumpkins and gourds and this year sold them in a special Saturday event.
Bond’s year of growing giants began with five seeds purchased for her from a Rhode Island grower as a Christmas present, and the seeds didn’t come cheap — Bond estimated the cost at about $250. Then, on April 1, she started the seeds indoors, transplanting the vines to her outdoor patch when warmer weather was here to stay.
In addition to daily watering and care, she provided shade for the pumpkins, covered them and padded them to prevent damage to the skin of the huge cultivars. She said she continually battled powdery mildew on the leaves because of the high humidity in Arkansas.
“This has been a sixmonth project,” Bond said, “starting the pumpkins and caring for them every day.” In addition to all her time and effort, Bond estimated she had spent $500 to grow the giant pumpkins.
Following their exhibition at the county fair, Bond said her giant pumpkins are going to be used for another purpose — not pumpkin pies but for use in videos on a TicToc channel. She said her two giants were purchased for $500, giving her some seed money to do it all over again next year.
Bond says she could use seeds from her pumpkins but, to give her a better chance, she will purchase some seeds again from a record-breaking grower to help her reach her goal of setting a new Arkansas record next year. She’ll need to grow a pumpkin of 692 pounds or better, depending on this year’s record pumpkins in Arkansas.