A competition has been launched to guess the weight of a giant pumpkin grown in Highbridge.
Ben Rayner, pictured above, has grown the monster pumpkin on his allotment garden in the town.
He has donated it to Westcroft Farm in Berrow where it is on display this week at their pumpkin patch where the weight competition is underway.
His wife Sophie says: “We have had an allotment for a few years now at Forge Rhyne Allotments near Aldi and Ben decided this year that he wanted to do something a little bit different.”
“He had a look online and found that some gardeners grow giant vegetables for competitions. He has grown giant onions and pumpkins. All giant pumpkins come from an Atlantic Giant variety, people then save the seeds off their biggest ones and this one was ‘line bred’ from BWhitesVeg’s pumpkin called ‘Gloria’.”
“Forge Rhyne Allotments are completely organic so the pumpkin patch was filled with mushroom compost and horse manure compost from Westcroft. The seed was sown in March under grow lights at home until after the last frost, and until it was big enough to withstand the onslaught from slugs.”
“Our approach was to dig a big hole filled with horse manure, seaweed, mycorrhizal fungi and chicken manure before planting the small plant on top. It was then watered well until it was established enough to get its roots down into the Somerset clay which holds water really well.”
“Once established watering was cut down to what we could spare as we have no mains water at the allotment and rely on what we can collect off the roofs we’ve built. While Ben was away with his decorating and renovation business DA Rayner Ltd I had to take over feeding duties which were mostly compost tea – a mix of composted plant matter & water – liquid seaweed and humic acid a couple of times per week.”
“Then it was mostly keeping on top of the weeds, cutting off smaller pumpkins so the plant isn’t overworked, burying the stem at specific intervals, so the plant can send out more roots to take up more moisture, and a lot of keeping it off neighbouring plots as it had a tendency to want to escape!”
She adds: “The plan was always to give the pumpkin to a children’s charity that my mum is involved with called Teddy20 for their Halloween party as we’ve supplied them with ‘normal’ pumpkins for the last couple of years, but it was quite obvious a few months ago that there’s no way it would fit in the car this time!”
“This led to a lot of discussion about what we were actually going to do with it as we couldn’t get any sort of machinery in to lift it as the ground is now too wet to drive on.”
“It was about this point that we saw Westcroft’s social media post saying they have a pumpkin patch this year and we made the decision. Tom and James came down this morning and the three of them got it up the field and into their van.”
“Next year Ben is hoping to grow a bigger one that could potentially compete in some competitions.”
“There’s a way of estimating the weight via measurements on the RHS website but next year we hope to take it them to a ‘weigh off’ to get an exact weight. We went down to Westcroft and I must say seeing the kids all having their picture taken with it makes us want to do a couple next year, one for Westcroft and one for Teddy20, although we still don’t know how we’re going to get it to these weigh-offs or to the Halloween party!”
Westcroft’s James Edwards adds: “There has been lots of interest in this huge pumpkin, which is on show at the farm until Halloween in our pumpkin patch. We thank Ben and Sophie for giving it to us!”
