Iowa man raises great pumpkins

By Ken Root

THE GREAT PUMPKIN--The largest pumpkin ever grown in Iowa at 1,662 pounds was recognized by Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Bill Northey. Don Young's pumpkin patch is only a few miles from the state capitol in Des Moines. (Journal photo by Ken Root.)

Don Young's garden spot is unassuming until closely examined. The dirt is black, as is the norm in this fertile area carved out of corn and soybean fields on the east side of Des Moines, Iowa. The feel of the soil in this confined space of 40 by 50 feet is exceptional when a hand full is grabbed up and examined. Organic matter seems to be exceedingly high and the entire garden is slightly domed from the addition of a large quantity of amendments, yet to be determined.

The proof of the effort and skill of this grower sits on the back quadrant of this garden in the midst of flat, long-stemmed, leaves that measure almost three feet across. It is a pumpkin of gigantic proportions still hooked to the vine, still taking up nutrients from the soil, still growing toward an illusive record size.

"This is my second best pumpkin this year," Don said last fall as he carefully walked across boards placed on the ground to allow access. "I am going to take it to Wisconsin to see if I can win their pumpkin weigh off. The tape says it weighs just over 1,200 pounds." (The official weight was 1,207 at the Stoughton, Wis. weigh off.)

Young is an enthusiastic man who is always smiling and talking about pumpkins. He explained that the sport of growing giant pumpkins originated with Howard Dill of Nova Scotia who developed the Atlantic Dill variety. Dill finally started letting other people have his seeds and the size of the pumpkins gets bigger each year. Last year was his best year ever, a year that all his research and practices came together, with a proven seed of the Atlantic Dill variety, to produce a pumpkin that weighed 1,662 pounds at the Anamosa, Iowa weigh off. He showed the modesty of a farmer but the exuberance of a high school athlete who just had a great game. Don was in the midst of his "fifteen minutes of fame" that had already made him a celebrity in the Midwest and soon at the national level. How he got there and where the pumpkin will wind up is a story worth telling.

Young and pumpkin growing friends go to great lengths to produce a fruit that is so large it can't support its own weight so it flattens and spreads like Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars.

His big pumpkins have to be removed from the patch with a lifting ring utilizing a forklift and a crane. Young makes his living as a tree trimmer, so he has the equipment. The big pumpkin sat on a padded pallet on a trailer in his yard. It measured five-and-a-half feet across, almost four feet high and a pinkish salmon color. The stem was two feet in circumference.

"It is the largest ever grown in Iowa and looked like the world record for awhile," he said without any hint of boasting, just a satisfied nod and a determined statement of his efforts over many years of trial and error in genetic research, soil fertility and plant care.

"I practice germination all winter on these seeds," he said as he held a light tan pumpkin seed that is larger than his thumbnail and almost a quarter inch thick. "I file down the edges and then put them in a peat pot in a warm and humid place with a little heating pad under them so they have the best chance to sprout."

He transplants only a few seeds to the garden soil, when conditions are most favorable, to get the quickest start. "When the two cotyledons unfold and the first true leaf starts to grow, I transplant and orient the pumpkin away from the first true leaf. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the pumpkin vine will grow in the opposite direction of the first leaf."

His big pumpkin grew at an average rate of 14 pounds per day from germination and hit 59 pounds per day in its major growth period. "I measure with a 'pumpkin tape' which allows me to compute the weight by going around it from various directions. Late in the season, the tape, which is sixteen feet long, was too short to reach all the way around this pumpkin."

The lineage of pumpkins is in the name attached to each seed. Last year's big Iowa pumpkin seeds will be labeled: Young 1662-07. The name incorporates the grower, weight and year of production. To track backward to the earlier generations, Young uses a website that a geneticist has prepared. "I study this thing all the time and see which seeds are proven to produce big pumpkins," he said. His seed for this year's pumpkin was the Wallace 1068-03.

Young has many growing tips that he freely shares. "I use organic fertilizer inputs from seaweed to fish emulsion to worm castings and all kinds of soil amendments." He makes a special "compost tea" for the pumpkin plant. "I take a woman's nylon stocking and fill it with worm castings and then put it in a barrel of rainwater that I catch off the roof of my garage. I put an aerator in it, like the kind you use to keep minnows alive, and let it steep for about three days," he said. "You can sure tell it when you spray it on the leaves and put this near the roots for quick uptake."

When the plant puts on its first female blossom, Young is quick to react and often cross pollinates it with another exceptional variety. "We'd like to get these big pumpkins to have a really bright color. My wife planted a seed this year from a guy in Canada, who is known to have the prettiest pumpkins, so on that cross, we just might get a record pumpkin that has that deep orange color."

Young's wife, Julie, grew the second largest pumpkin at the 2007 Iowa State Fair weighing 1,102 pounds. Early last October they picked her second (from the Canadian seed) that weighed 801, and used a crane and harness ring to position it in the front yard as a sort of jack 'o lantern on steroids. It sat in front of their home showing its bright orange contrast to the green grass and falling leaves.

Julie cut a window in the pumpkin about one-foot square to gain access to the seeds. She reached in with a large plastic ladle and scooped out a bucket full of seeds and pulp. This is the mother lode for giant pumpkin growers as the seeds are the currency of the hobby and the hope for future years.

"Some pumpkins will produce five hundred seeds," said Don about what he had hoped for the giant he raised last year. "I had one a couple of years ago that only had nine seeds. That was a disgracefully small number." He shook off his disappointments quickly and turned to his joy of getting the garden spot ready to grow a world record.

"I get A&L Labs in California to do soil tests for me. They give me their analysis of what I've done and where I need to add more N, P, K or other nutrients." Young explained that the nitrogen gets the leaves growing early and the phosphorous develops the root system, but the fruit sucks up the potassium in very large quantity and that can be the limiting factor in how large a pumpkin will grow.

In the A&L Western Agricultural Laboratories results from October 2006, the soil was analyzed to be very high in organic matter (24 percent) nitrogen (80 ppm), phosphorous (216 ppm), potassium (2,115 ppm), sulfur (285 ppm), zinc (12.5 ppm) and boron (4.3 ppm). It was low in calcium (3,127 ppm), sodium (60 ppm) and manganese (3 ppm). Young added 500 lbs of gypsum to raise the calcium level, plus other "witches brew" amendments. The comments from A&L point to the groundwater concerns of such high levels of fertility: "Soil fertility appears to be excessive in certain areas. Hold back on further applications for the time being, unless you feel sampling may not have been representative."

Every stage of the season is critical in producing the largest pumpkin. The male flowers emerge first and pollinating the female flowers has to be done as they open at first light of day. Young and other competitive growers set only a few fruit that are quickly evaluated and only one is kept on the vine for the season. Young allows an area of about 24 by 30 (720 square feet) for each vine.

"The leaves have to get sunlight to produce a big pumpkin," said Young as he bent a stem to show that flat, wide surface. "I install a misting system that runs for a few minutes every hour in the afternoon to keep the leaves from wilting." He also covers the runners of the vines with a rich topsoil mixture so they will root down as well and he prunes the vine in the shape of a horizontal Christmas tree to channel all the nutrients to the rapidly growing fruit.

"When they get about the size of a beach ball they can grow so fast they explode," he said from experience. "That's a heartbreaker when they split or pop." The pumpkin that survives is coaxed to maturity with a shade, fans, insect protection and even sulfur on the stem to keep it dry and free of fungus. Young ran eight electric fans on his big pumpkin during the summer months.

Although Don Young's giant pumpkin hit a record size, he did not have the largest pumpkin of all times. That went to Joe Jutras, a Rhode Island grower who weighed in at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts at 1,689 pounds. The third largest last year was grown in upstate New York by Dan and Jason McKie at 1,631 pounds.

The sanctioning body is the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth with 57 chapters worldwide. Through the efforts of their president they managed to get ABC's Good Morning America to put the top three pumpkins on their program last October 29th. Young had been exhibiting his pumpkin all over Iowa since the weigh off early last October. He agreed to haul it to New York City and be on GMA.

"I'll get to see my pumpkin growing friends and get some notoriety for the hobby," he said modestly as he prepared for the trip to New York. "But, I tell you, I'm not bringing this pumpkin home! I'll grab the seeds and leave it in an alley for a homeless person to live in this winter," he said jokingly.

The final chapter for the great Iowa pumpkin took a different twist than anyone imagined. Following the Monday appearance on Good Morning America, where the growers were interviewed by George Stephanopoulos in Times Square, the pumpkin was transferred to the Chelsea Market to be carved into a giant jack 'o lantern. Young and the carver made the incisions into the fruit and discovered there were no seeds.

"I couldn't believe it!" he said. "This is rare but not unprecedented. The 1999 world champion had no seeds. All that we found were rudimentary, thin and undeveloped." Crushed were his hopes of distributing seeds to growers to further prove the genetics and disappointed were the fund raisers for giant pumpkin grower organizations. It is unknown if the largest (Jutras 1689-07) or the third largest (McKie 1631-07) had viable seeds, as they both went back home for future display.

Young credits good genetics, an aggressive fertilization program and an excellent summer for his success. "The rain and warm nights in August may have been the difference," he mused about how his pumpkin could be 594 pounds larger than its parent.

Young switched his garden area for this year to a new spot and tilled in truck loads of organic matter to raise the fertility. He's determined to try for an even larger pumpkin in 2008. He is studying the pedigrees of available seeds and will swap the seeds of his wife's brightly colored 800 pounder and his 1,200 pounder to get the best shot at 1,700 pounds or above. He arrived back in Des Moines on Halloween after driving straight through from New York, greeted by his family and an 800 pound jack 'o lantern, tired, but ready to go for a new record in 2008.

Note: Ken Root has prepared a podcast of an interview with Don Young. Go to: www.whofarm.com and click on "podcasts."

10/13/08
4 Star NE\1-B

Date: 10/8/08

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