What Does It Take To Grow The World’s Heaviest Pumpkin?
- On September 21, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Books, Plant Spotlight, Veggies, What In Tarnation?
- 2
There’s a lot to love about the Minnesota State Fair, but the contests have always been on my Top-10 list. Across the fairgrounds, everything from pies and jellies to seed art and orchids compete for praise and ribbons. Standing in front of the brightly lit cases and displays, it’s not always clear why one chocolate chip cookie beat out another, or why the dahlia on the left is superior to the one on the right when both were displayed singly in empty Michelob bottles.
But when you get to the Horticulture Building and enter the vegetable room, things become much more straightforward . Sure, there is still some head scratching to do over the difference between, say, the award-winning red potatoes and the losers. But it is immediately clear how the winner of the “Largest Scalloped Squash” contest nabbed that title.
And the same is true of the “Largest Banana Squash” and the seemingly vast yet strangely uncrowded category of “Largest Squash (other than banana or scalloped).” The rules are simple: You are the biggest; you win. Giant pumpkins don’t have it so easy. In the world of pumpkins of unusual size, weight is what matters, and the biggest pumpkin isn’t necessarily the heaviest.
I know this because I just finished reading Susan Warren’s Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever. If the subtitle sounds hyperbolic, let me assure you, it isn’t. Warren, who is a deputy bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, spent a season with a handful of the many enthusiastic and, okay, obsessive people who grow giant pumpkins all over the world.
Dick and Ron Wallace, a father and son team who have been growing giant pumpkins in Rhode Island for years, are the main duo we get to know. But there are other endearing growers at the center of this book, and Warren followed them all as they endured bugs, heat, rain, lightning, rot, ulcers, varmints, foaming stump slime, financial pain, jealousy, heartbreak and more in hopes of growing the world’s heaviest pumpkin in 2006.
It sounds weird, I know, but the ups and downs of the growing season were so suspenseful, I honestly couldn’t wait to get to the end of the book and find out who wins. Now all I need to do is check to see if there are any giant pumpkin weigh-offs going on around here yet this season. If I’ve missed them, I am definitely going to get to one next year. The results of the 2012 Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth weigh-offs are still coming in. But you can check them here if you’re interested. In 2011, Jim and Kelsey Bryson of Ontario won the world record with a pumpkin that weighed in at 1,818.5 pounds. Check out of photo of them and their otherworldly pumpkin here.
Growing Potatoes in a Bag
I’ve never grown potatoes. But when I got the opportunity to test Gardener’s Supply Company’s Potato Grow Bag this summer, I thought, why not give it a try? The fabric bags come in several colors, but I went with black so it wouldn’t stand out so much amidst the rest of the containers in our garden. Our potato starts came from our friends at Bossy Acres: three fingerlings and 2 blue heirlooms. Thanks Elizabeth and Karla!
The planting process was similar in some ways to the type of hilling you do with potatoes when you plant them in the ground. Following the instructions on the Grow Bag packaging, we put the bag where we wanted it in the garden and filled it with a 4 inches of pre-moistened, organic potting mix. (Gardener’s Supply sells a mix that you can buy, too.) Next, we placed our potato starts on top of the mix, being careful to space them evenly apart. As instructed, we covered the little potato pieces with another 3 inches of potting mix and watered everything well.
The plants grew fast and we followed the instructions to add 4 inches of potting mix for every 8 inches of growth until the bag was completely full. One thing to note: The instructions didn’t say this, but because we have problems with voles, we put a small square of hardware cloth between the bottom of the bag and the ground before we filled it to keep the critters out.
Read More»What Do Our Gardens Say About Us?
Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
— Alfred Austin
I don’t know enough about the English poet Alfred Austin to understand why he thought he could divine who, or more precisely, “what”, someone was simply by looking at their garden. But he makes an interesting point. Having toured many more gardens than I usually do this summer, I’ve really been struck by the vast differences in the look and feel of people’s yards.
Modern straight lines vs. curving cottage beds, shady oases vs. sun-drenched plots for edibles and brightly colored perennials, cherubs and ornate statuary vs. gnomes and silly flamingos. And probably not surprisingly, a near tie between the number of gardeners who like plant tags and the ability to see the soil between each plant and those who would never consider plant tags and prefer a more wild, overlapping look.
What would Austin make of this? “What” are these people? Does orderly equal neatnik, control freak or professional organizer while wild signifies some kind of messy, disheveled, devil-may-care personality? Maybe. But that seems too simple since, once you get to know most people, they often turn out to be much more complicated than they first appeared. He must have meant something more. Might we consider how each gardener’s parents and grandparents gardened? Where they grew up? Whether they need to grow food to put food on the table?
Read More»Is Aquaponics the Way We’ll Farm In the Future?
Aquaponics has been on my “Must Learn More About This” list for a long while. So when I found out Garden Fresh Farms in nearby Maplewood was giving free tours of their aquaponics facility, I signed right up to go. The tour was scheduled for the middle of a week day and Maplewood is a pretty long drive out of the Twin Cities, so I didn’t expect much of a crowd. Whew! I was so wrong.
All of the tour dates booked up fast and when we arrived, the back room of the building where the tour started was already bustling with people eating cookies and waiting to head inside. If you don’t know much about aquaponics, no worry. I’ll do my best to explain, albeit simply because goodness known I am no expert on this.
Essentially, plants are grown in water rather than soil. Lights do the work of the sun, and fertilizer is provided by fish in the water (tilapia and trout in this case) who generously contribute their nutrient-rich poo. In turn, the plants’ roots help filter the water for the fish.
Read More»Veggies Gone Wild
- On June 14, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Container Gardening, Fertilizer, Herbs, Organic Gardening, Seeds, Uncategorized, Veggies
- 0
Minnesota is known for extreme weather. We think nothing of a few 90-degree days followed by a 50-degree week, the drastic temperature changes producing everything from thunderstorms and hail to eerie green skies teaming with funnel clouds. “Meh,” we yawn. “We have basements.”
This year, though, things are really weird. After a winter that wasn’t, spring came early and between the already excessive rain, heat and humidity our gardens have gone wild.
Some of you might remember a column I wrote a few weeks ago about how we made a raised bed out of a livestock trough. Well, the tomato in that trough is huge now and the chard, kale and peppers are well on their way too.
I’ve never grown so many edibles in pots and raised beds, so every day when I go outside to check on them I’ll thrilled to find that everybody is still alive, even thriving—this despite the ravenous squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and racoons that call our yard home. (We even saw a possum scuttle under our neighbor’s porch once.)
Here are a few pictures I took of the garden yesterday that I thought I would share. If you notice I’m doing something that you think could be a problem, please tell me! Like I said, I’ve never tried growing some of these things and I’ve certainly never tried putting so many edibles together in containers to maximize space.
Potatoes are new to the garden this year. I’m growing them in a fabric bag from Gardener’s Supply that I’m product testing. You fill the bag with soil as the potatoes grow. So far so good.
Farming: A Love Story
- On May 22, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Books, Organic Gardening, Soil, Sustainable Agriculture, Veggies
- 0
Peaceful people, I’m telling you what: By the time you get to the point in “Turn Here Sweet Corn” where Atina Diffley is fighting to defend her Eagan, Minnesota, farm against Koch Industries’ attempts to run a crude-oil pipeline through it, you’re going to want to get yourself a pitchfork and help her and her husband Martin stand their ground.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press earlier this year, Diffley’s memoir is often billed as a David vs. Goliath tale, an inside look at organic farming and a love story combined. That’s an apt description, but readers will likely gravitate to the thread that draws them in. What kept me turning pages was the love. Love between Atina and Martin, love of growing healthy food organically, love of the land and other loves more difficult to define.
“Turn Here Sweet Corn” may have been the words Diffley read on a roadside sign when first visiting Martin’s Gardens of Eagan farm. But those words could just as easily be read as a term of endearment coined by a farmer for his/her love. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Diffley thinks that too as this is no ordinary memoir, and it’s no farming primer either. Warm and lyrical, Diffley’s writing is enviably good by any standard.
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