Great Pumpkin Grows Up

'Extreme Gardening' Produces Giants

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. -- What kind of a man does it take to grow a 1,300-pound pumpkin?

He needs patience, of course, for the six-month growing season, and enough dedication to work two hours every night in the patch. And it helps to have a familiarity with plant breeding, a tolerance for the smell of liquefied codfish, and a $100 Giant Pumpkin lifting tarp. All of the things you'd expect.

Plus one more: A big-time pumpkin grower needs to be comfortable with cheering crowds.

That's why, even before Jim Beauchemin brought his pale-orange monster squash to the famous Topsfield Fair weigh-off, he already had a victory speech prepared.

"Not only did I go to the Super Bowl," Beauchemin, 47, bellowed to the hundreds of spectators when the numbers of the scale finally settled at a best-in-show 1,314.8 pounds, "I won the Super Bowl!"

That's what it feels like sometimes, when you're a winner in the ultra-competitive world of giant pumpkins. This once-sleepy rural hobby features international rankings, raucous weigh-offs and a racehorse-style trade in the seeds of champions. Enthusiasts say it comes as close to true sport as anything can be -- and still be mainly about produce.

"It's extreme gardening," said George Hoomis, 54, a grower from Ipswich, Mass.

The pumpkins in question here are not just overfed siblings of the ones that make Halloween jack-o'-lanterns. Instead, they come from a strain called Dill's Atlantic Giant, specially bred for rapid growth and very thick walls.

It is not a pretty pumpkin: A lumpy Atlantic Giant often resembles a smaller, paler cousin of Jabba the Hutt. But nobody cares, as long as -- in pumpkin parlance -- it "goes heavy."

"It's a contest of weight," said Woody Lancaster, 59, treasurer of the New England Pumpkin Grower's Association. "That's all that matters."

And what weight: In the 1980s, a 400-pound pumpkin was considered huge. But that seems like a paperweight when compared with the current world record of 1,469 pounds, which was set this month at a weigh-off in Altoona, Pa.

The reason for the growth, pumpkin enthusiasts believe, is people.