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| Sasquatch of squash: Don Young produced a pumpkin that grew by as much as 50 pounds a day. Harry Baumert/The Des Moines Register/AP |
How an Iowa man grows a 1,600-pound pumpkin
Don Young uses manure, seaweed, and a special 'compost tea' to produce a massive squash that misses the world record by 27 pounds.
from the October 31, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Young toils in his patch to minimize the risk to his pumpkins and maximize their growth. He shades pumpkins with old sheets to keep sunlight from prematurely ripening their skin and covers their bottoms with a special fabric he got from a pulp mill to ward off burrowing mice.
He tills the soil with manure, compost, and seaweed. He moistens the gourds with rainwater he collects in tanks behind his garage. If he uses city water, he lets it sit for a couple days to dilute the chlorine. He'll also water the pumpkins with a "compost tea" made from molasses and worm castings – a "secret that's been handed down to me from the good growers," he says.
Mark McWilliams, a big-pumpkin grower from Anamosa, Iowa, says Young is fanatical but regarded with a mix of awe and respect. "He's the guy to beat in Iowa right now," he says.
This year, Young knew right away that he had a superstar on his hands. By late July, his main pumpkin was about 500 pounds and adding as much as 50 pounds a day. That high-growth period is the most dangerous time: It's possible a big pumpkin will fatten too fast and crack, even explode. "I can control the growth, somewhat, by less watering," he says. Still, "you're on the edge of stretching that pumpkin as fast as it will grow, and some of them can't handle it."
Young starts his pumpkin patch in the first week of May with four or five seeds. They produce a series of vines, which he arranges around a main vine using bamboo sticks. In the last week of June, he allows five of the largest vines to grow one female flower, which he pollinates to start growing actual pumpkins. Once the pumpkins are about the size of a volleyball, he'll pick out the one maturing the fastest. If any other flowers sprout, he pinches them off.
Besides the "big guy," Young was growing four other girthful gourds this year. But by early August, problems had surfaced in the litter: One pumpkin just stopped growing at 500 pounds. Then, Young found a massive crack in a 900 pounder. Soon another one split, too. Cracks disqualify pumpkins from competition because they make it possible for a grower to add liquid to increase their weight.
By mid-August, Young was beginning to worry. Last year, he didn't have a pumpkin to enter in the big competition in Anamosa because they had all cracked or exploded. This year, he was down to two, with more than eight weeks until the weigh-in for the festival. When a pumpkin cracks, "you start kicking, stomping your feet," he says. "I could grow all of them real easy like, and come up with a 300-pounder without the fear of cracking it. But that won't win anything."
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