Linus would be beside himself over this one.
The Peanuts character who famously awaited “The Great Pumpkin” would be awed at Rob Beaulieu’s 1,300-pound gourd.
The Presque Isle resident got into growing giant pumpkins about 15 years ago, but this year has his heftiest specimen yet. It isn’t the largest pumpkin ever recorded in Maine — that record went to Edwin Pierpont of Jefferson for one weighing more than a ton — but it caused a stir when he recently drove to town with it.
“It barely fit in my pickup,” he said. “I stopped at a couple of stores and people were swarming me. They were like ‘Holy cow,’” he said.
And that’s just the one that’s on the front lawn. There’s another in the garden he estimates is already a hundred pounds heavier.
The process takes a lot of precision and science, he said.
He started two seeds indoors in early spring, and planted those two plants outdoors in April. As the vines flower, he transfers pollen by hand to one female pumpkin blossom. Some people wait for the bees to pollinate, but others prefer to pollinate by hand to ensure the fruit grows.
He puts a plastic bag over the blossom to keep pests and disease out and leaves it alone. After a week or two, depending on the weather, it will reach basketball size. As the fruit approaches beach-ball size, the work begins.
The vines produce multiple pumpkins as they spread, which all need to be plucked off so the plant’s energy goes to the single large gourd, Beaulieu said. Along the way, he encourages the vines in the right direction, weeds, fertilizes and waters. And they take a lot of water.
“You can put 100 to 150 gallons of water a day on a hot summer day, because they’re actually 90 percent water,” he said.
Secondary vines need to be terminated so they don’t take growth away from the giant, he said. The fruit has to be monitored for pests and disease. He sprays pesticide regularly and applies fungicide to ward off powdery mildew. His fertilizer formula is secret, he said.
Giant pumpkins often grow in colors other than orange, Beaulieu said. Many are whitish or light green, but he thinks orange make the best pumpkins even though they sometimes don’t grow as large.
He saves seeds from his pumpkins and dries them, preserving them for the next season.
In his garden, a space roughly 15 feet square boasts vines some 2 to 3 inches thick and leaves up to a foot and a half in diameter. That’s just from the two plants, he said.
The pumpkin that’s still growing has an umbrella over its stem end to protect a growth crack from rain. Beaulieu locates a tiny pumpkin in a corner of the patch, about the size of the end of a finger, and plucks it off.
He grows the pumpkins just for fun, but he’s learned a lot. Professionals will actually trade flowers and analyze tissue samples to get just the right lineage in a seed, he said. For example, someone recently grew a pumpkin weighing more than 2,700 pounds. Seeds from that pumpkin sold for $1,000 apiece, he said.
Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, grew that 2,749-pound pumpkin and won the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, California, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Maine’s current record belongs to Pierpont, who won the prize at the 2021 Damariscotta Pumpkinfest and Regatta for his pumpkin weighing 2,121.5 pounds, according to the Maine Pumpkin Growers Organization.
Beaulieu has never competed, but he’s not ruling it out. He knows of only a handful of people in Aroostook County who grow giant pumpkins, but is already thinking how interesting it would be to have a local competition.
For now, he wants people to enjoy seeing his pumpkins as much as he’s enjoyed growing them. He knows some of the local elementary school principals and might take his front lawn decoration on a road trip.
“I’m thinking of taking it down there for the little kids to see,” he said. “Imagine the kids in elementary school. They would go crazy over seeing it.”
