The Bottom Line
Pros
- Engaging real-life characters.
- Lots of growing tips (even for normal sized pumpkins).
- Takes you from seed to weigh-in.
- Surprisingly suspenseful and dramatic.
- Amazing photos.
Cons
- Reporting style sometimes detracts from the personal drama.
Description
- Author Susan Warren, for Bloomsbury USA, NY, Hardcover, 256 pages, $24.95.
- Reads like fiction, but full of great gardening advice, as the growers battle nature and the odds.
- Shows the complete cycle by following pumpkin growers through an entire growing season.
- Features an engaging cast of real-life characters, from star struck wanna-bes to a slime specialist.
- Every gardener will see themselves somewhere in this book and start to think, "Hey, maybe I could compete."
Guide Review - Backyard Giants - The Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever
Talk about a great pumpkin! Here is a special, obsessed breed of gardeners. When they're not working, they're worrying. Susan Warren follows a handful of "Pumpkin Royalty", focusing particularly on the father/son team of Dick & Ron Wallace of RI, as they analyze, plan, plant and pamper their prized pumpkins. The book is as full of human drama as it is growing tips.
Growing season starts as soon as the current pumpkins are harvested. The soil must be replenished and they know exactly what percent of organic matter they want, even what direction the vines should grow. They cross and save seed, which they start with all the care of an ICU ward. But growing the largest pumpkin is as much luck as it is hard work and experience and the growers are extremely gracious about helping other growers in this small, select brotherhood. And thanks to this book, we're treated to a good deal of practical advice for growing our own show stoppers.
Early enthusiasm gives way to early defense, as insects, rot and an assortment of 4-legged pests threaten these supreme pumpkin patches. Thankfully the tension is limited to about a 90 day growing season. But what a growing season! These giants can gain upwards of 26 pounds a day during their peak, in August. Your sides would split if you were gaining that much weight too.
It's genuinely fun to get into the heads of these growers as they strategize and dance around problems, not the least of which are the understandable complaints from their pumpkin widows. The excitement culminates in a series of fall weigh-ins, as a convoy of pickup trucks enter the arenas with these enormous gourds gently secured on the beds. Will the pumpkins arrive unscathed? Will the largest be the heaviest? Will the 1500 lb. mark ever be crossed? Is there a limit to how large a pumpkin can get? Read on...
