by Greg Shaw

Pumpkins, an icon of Halloween…so when I saw a package of pumpkin seeds that said Big Max Pumpkin Seeds – Grow 100-pound Pumpkins. I immediately bought one pack. My rental house had no place to plant them so I purchased the largest pot I could find. The plant produced a pumpkin close to 100 pounds, I was not disappointed. The pumpkin was the catalyst for the pumpkins I have been growing for the last 35 years.

However, it would be another six years before I grew pumpkins again. After finishing school, I returned to Magnolia. A few of you may remember the little house directly behind where I live now on 30th Ave W, it had a gigantic front yard. This would be a great yard for pumpkins. The little house was on the back of the lot with a small flower bed in front, which is where I planted two pumpkin plants. They did well, each year I added more pumpkin plants until the entire yard was covered with pumpkins and flowers. The area was about three times larger than my current front yard.

The Pumpkin House at 3707 – 29th Avenue West Stop by on Halloween!
(photo courtesy of Greg Shaw)

A gentleman named Joe Holland used to win at the Puyallup Fair almost every year and is probably the winningest pumpkin grower in the U.S. The pumpkins in my yard now are descendants of Joe Holland’s seeds.

I purchased seeds 3 years ago, from Joe. One seed from a 1,700-pound pumpkinwas $35 and another seed from  a  1,500-pound  pumpkin  was $25. I asked one grower’s wife how her husband prepares his soil. She told me he digs a hole the size of an Olympic size swimming pool using his backhoe and then fills it with his secret mix. I do not think it registered yet what the top pumpkin growers do to win. Gradually I did realize after going to pumpkin weigh-ins for more than 30 years – I would have to be content with the biggest pumpkin in Magnolia.

I am also motivated by various newspaper, TV and even Sunset Magazine stories about my pumpkins.  Each year I would try and do more. Lots of grade school classes and pre-school classes come to take in the pumpkin patch. I also delivered pumpkins to Magnolia Elementary, Catherine Blaine, Ronald McDonald House, Seattle Children’s Home and the Seattle Center.

And Halloween had to be bigger every year with more than 100 pumpkins carved and lit with candles, a scary Halloween tunnel leading to the front door with a strobe light bouncing off 100 pounds of dry-ice clouds and enough candy for more than the thousand trick-or-treaters.

“What do you do with the pumpkins after Halloween?” It’s sort of like I am a villain because I do not turn them into a thousand pumpkin pies. The reality is they are a hybrid type grown for size and speed of maturity. I have tried to produce some pies and I thought I had found the answer when a friend who had attended the Cordon Blue School of Cooking in France asked if she could have a pumpkin to make pies. She reduced and reduced for two days until she could reduce no more, there was still, alas, no flavor.

I save the seeds for growing. If you knock on my door in the spring I am happy to give you some. There are up to 600 seeds in a Giant Pumpkin if you had a prize-winning pumpkin and sold the seeds for $35 each like I paid for one seed, you would not think about roasting $28,000 dollars.

After Halloween, the pumpkins are composted and used as nutrients for next year’s growth. If a few are still in good shape they will stay through Thanksgiving before returning to the earth.