Saratoga Springs welcomed farmers and their giant pumpkins from across the country for an annual competition and celebration over the weekend.
Pulpy pumpkin poundage was the name of the game Saturday…
as hundreds gathered in downtown Saratoga Springs for the 9th annual Giant PumpkinFest.
Andy Wolf is helping run the show with the New York State Giant Pumpkin Growers Association. He says if you can grow a garden, you can grow a giant pumpkin, but,
“Oh it can be exhausting for some people. Yeah, especially if you’re not used to dealing with something like this then, you know, you’re talking a tractor, specialized equipment, harnesses to actually pick them up and lift them out of there. Ones this size, back in the day, we used to roll them up and get a tarp underneath of them and get the football team over and try to get them into the back of the truck without breaking them. But, nowadays, we do it a little bit easier with machines,” said Wolf.
The pumpkins are lifted to the mainstage’s scale with a forklift and a special harness. Before weighing, they are checked for soft spots and cracks.
Wolf says the best time to start growing a giant pumpkin is right now.
“If you’ve got a piece of lawn that you don’t like mowing, get out there and tear it up. Bring in a truckload of manure and spread it out and get it planted into a winter cover crop so you’re preparing for next year to get that soil jacked up,” said Wolf.
Wolf’s pumpkin weighs in at 1,162 pounds, 14th place out of 24. That’s about as much as one of the city’s famed Thoroughbred horses.
Wayne Seelow isn’t expecting to win but after 13 years of growing giant pumpkins he’s learned to just enjoy the day.
“Within the first 30 days you know whether you got a good one or not. They do most of their growing from 30 to 50 days. They’ll put on 60, 70 pounds a day, so you can actually see them grow,” said Seelow.
While rewarding, Seelow says, the runup to competitions like this can be challenging.
“It’s mentally, physically, and whatever else you want to put in there. It’s tough, everybody thinks these things are easy to grow. If you can get 1,000 pounds to the scale, you’re doing something,” said Seelow.
Pumpkins aren’t the only thing on display. Christopher MacDonald brought behemoth watermelons, tomatoes, and gourds.
“And this is a giant string bean. I always say that but I’m joking,” said Christopher MacDonald.
At 6-foot-5, MacDonald is standing in the shadow of a gourd that’s at least four feet taller than himself.
“Most people would know them as snake gourds, so when you grow it up a trellis it will grow straight, when you grow it on the ground it will curl up into a ball. So, you just grow it up on a 12-foot high, 14-foot high trellis and it hangs down,” said MacDonald.
For Andy DeSantis, oversized pumpkins are overrated. He brought a self-proclaimed “smallest pumpkin” even though it’s not an official category.
“These guys, look at all the work they did on those 2,000 pound,” said DeSantis. “This is .4 grams. 1,135 times lighter than a pound!”
Lois and Terry Nelson came from West Virginia to get their pumpkin weighed.
“So, we were scheduled to go to a competition in Elkin, North Carolina, which was about 7 hours from our home. And because of Hurricane Helene and everything they got tons of water yesterday and they were flooded and under flood waters and so they canceled as we already had the fruit cut and were ready to walk out the door to drive. So, when you have a fruit cut you gotta get it weighed and we couldn’t wait a week because if you wait a week, it loses weight,” said Nelson.
It’s their first time in Saratoga, but the giant pumpkin community’s roots run deep.
“It’s great bagels! Yeah, these people have been great—everybody,” said Terry Nelson.
“Very, very nice. I say ‘pumpkin growers are happy people,’ and so we have a good time wherever we go, usually. And we knew a couple of the growers, once we started traveling to New York, some of our other friends said ‘well such-and-such is going to be there or such-and-such is going to be there,’ and so we knew them, we knew Andy Wolf. And so, actually, the pumpkin that we grew is from one of Andy’s seeds,” said Nelson.
Their pumpkin weighs 1,727 pounds, snagging third place. The weight to beat: 2,018 pounds by Jim Hazeltine.
After the competition, the pumpkins are sold by the pound or turned into jack-o-lanterns.