Like most people, I’m always proud and perhaps even slightly smug when I harvest my carrots and find a particularly large specimen or even if by pure luck I have a single leek that actually has a reasonable thickness. However, I’ve never really had any interest in specifically growing giant vegetables. That is, until I started to follow Matthew Oliver’s experience of trying to grow a record breaking UK pumpkin last year!

After receiving a £1250 (!) seed from the current 951 kg world record breaking heaviest pumpkin, Matthew was tasked with trying to grow a record breaking UK pumpkin outdoors at RHS Hyde Hall. After months of dedicated care and attention to detail which is written up at great length here, the final result was a whopping 605 kg pumpkin which claimed the record of the heaviest outdoor grown pumpkin in the UK.

Inspired by this and after having been very kindly sent some seeds from another monster 359 kg pumpkin, I want to try and grow a giant pumpkin of my very own this year! Obviously, I don’t have a huge amount of space or any experience in growing giant pumpkins but I want to see what might be possible to achieve on your average allotment. For the record, my heaviest pumpkin last year weighed in at a gargantuan 6 kg so the bar is set rather low to try and beat that this year.

I’m hoping to regularly document my attempt at growing a giant pumpkin which will begin with seed sowing in mid-April. I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has tried growing giant pumpkins before or has similar been inspired to try this year, so get in touch either through the comments, Twitter or Facebook.
Brilliant.. 🙂
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My own giant(ish) pumpkin is featured as Star Letter in this month’s (February 2017) Grow Your Own magazine 🙂 and I wrote about it in my blog (with pictures). I’ve grown biggish ones in previous years – but never THIS big! Not sure I would bother again – it was fun, but a LOT of hassle getting it off the plot and transporting it home! This year’s pumpkin adventures for me will focus on different types of shape, colour, texture and taste – as I now know that (for me) bigger does not necessarily mean better 🙂 But I do look forward to watching your progress – I think it is something that we allotmenteers all have to do at least once in our allotmenting lifetime 🙂
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Congratulations on having your letter featured and I’ll certainly pop over to your blog for some tips. I still plan on growing a range of other different varieties of Pumpkins and Squash as usual. Both Winter Luxury Pie and Rouge Vif D’ Etampes are great pumpkin varieties if you havn’t tried them before. As you say, it does feel like something everyone should try at least once!
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Looking forward to keeping up how you get along.
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Your 6kg pumpkin is a fine specimen! I hope it tasted lovely too!
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It did, it made a very tasy pie and plenty of soup!
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This should be good. Looking forward to the updates 🙂
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