HONEYDEW GROWERS PRODUCE BIG PUMPKIN
Resident believes 1,677-pound gourd is biggest grown in Emerald Triangle
A Humboldt County pumpkin grower’s massive entry at the yearly Safeway annual World Championship Pumpkin WeighOff in Half Moon Bay ranked among the largest entries in the contest.
Honeydew resident Ian Segman’s 1,677-pound pumpkin, his personal best to date, ranked fifth at the event held this week, earning the grower a $1,000 prize for his entry grown at the Mattole River Organic Farms.
Jeff Uhlmeyer of Olympia, Washington, entered the contest’s winner, weighing in at 2,119 pounds.
Segman told the Times-Standard most giant pumpkins grown for such contests generally come from one open-pollinated variety, with seeds constantly being swapped at events and seed exchanges.
“Almost all of these giant pumpkins are basically one open-pollinated variety, the Dill Atlantic giant pumpkin, named after a guy named Howard Dill who kind of developed these seeds,” he explained. “Pumpkin growers and clubs exchange and cross-pollinate between (each other), so the pumpkins are constantly evolving, but they’re still basically the same strain of large squash.”
According to the grower, the first step in growing such a specimen is oftentimes recognizing one really does want a giant pumpkin on their property.
“You say you want to grow a big pumpkin, but first you have to say to yourself, ‘I really do want to grow a big pumpkin?’ You may not want to admit it to your wife just yet, but you have to admit to yourself you’re going for a big one,” he quipped. “It’s hard to imagine because when you’re pollinating the pumpkin when maybe the vine is only 10 feet long, relatively small, you have to (be aware) there’s maybe going to be a pumpkin almost the size of a Volkswagen sitting there.”
Despite his pumpkin’s huge dimensions, Sigman says giant specimens still grow within the same timeframe as a normal, garden-variety vegetable. He
started this pumpkin season near the end of March in a small greenhouse with about 12 plants, selecting his favorites, pruning and pollinating along the way.
“The pumpkin is only growing for about three or four months, that’s about 100 to 110 days,” the grower said.
On a good week, a pumpkin can make some massive gains.
“There was one week in August, I think that it grew to 180 pounds. The average is somewhere around 40 pounds a day on the fruit. That’s one of the reasons they’re so fun to grow, they’re just really responsive plants when we really get them tuned in and going. … The vines can grow seven or eight inches a day in the middle of summer when they’re really cooking. It’s just an amazing plant to watch as a spectator sport,” Sigman elaborated.
As part of preparing his plots, Sigman sets a 30-foot by 30-foot space per plant, with selected pumpkins grown on plywood with about two inches of sand to stabilize the gourd.
“The sand, for some reason, helps pumpkins stay flat on the bottom when they’re really big. The way they grow, they kind of move a lot so it’s like a bearing surface,” he said.
While Sigman has seen success growing giant pumpkins, it is an activity that requires a lot of care, work and luck, with years passing by without a potential winner.
“The last time I really grew a pumpkin that I could take to a contest was in 2018. Both in 2019 and 2020 I tried growing three different pumpkins, and, you know, for whatever various reasons I was not able to pull it off,” he said. “I had a big one get (ninth place) or they had rot problems. This year. I grew a total of three, but I really only pulled one off.”
“I don’t know if you can say I’m a really good pumpkin grower because I only grow one out of nine right maybe. It is challenging, but part of the fun of it is that it’s never over till it’s over,” Sigman added.
While some pumpkins may not be viable contest entries, they still grow to be quite large. Sigman shared he had a pumpkin grow to an estimated weight between 400 and 500 pounds. Last year, he grew a pumpkin near 800 pounds that cracked open and rotted.
The Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, a sanctioning body setting standards for giant pumpkin growers and related contests ranked Sigman’s pumpkin the 109th heaviest in the world in 2021.
The Great Pumpkin Commonwealth’s heaviest pumpkin on record for 2021 is a 2,702.9-pounder grown by Italian grower Stefano Cutupi in the town of Radda in Chianti, Tuscany. The gourd was weighed at the Campionato dello Zuccone, Italian for “Pumpkin Championships,” in Pisa.
While many other pumpkins outrank his best effort this year, Sigman believes he has harvested the biggest pumpkin ever grown in the region. His previous best, entered in the 2018 contest, weighed 1,452 pounds.
“Unless somebody else comes out of the woodwork at the last minute, this is the biggest pumpkin that has ever been grown in Humboldt County, and, I dare say, in Humboldt, Del Norte, Trinity and Mendocino counties… it’s the biggest pumpkin ever grown in the Emerald Triangle,” he asserted.
Sigman hopes to see more people vie for his crown of largest pumpkin ever grown in the region.
“I’d be happy with challengers anyway. I think Humboldt County should be producing more big pumpkins,” Sigman stated.
The huge pumpkin will be displayed at the Children’s Fairyland theme park in Oakland through Halloween.