Who Knew the World of Competitive Giant Pumpkin Growing Could Be so Much Fun? ... Or Even Existed!

by Susan Warren
(New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007)
Hardcover, 245 Pages, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781596912786, US$24.95

Early to bed,
Early to rise,
Work like hell and fertilize.
-Emily Whaley

From the Cover: Every year, the race to grow the biggest pumpkin in the world draws a rowdy crowd of obsessive gardeners to county fairs and weigh-offs across the country. The competition is furious; there's sabotage and treachery and the heartbreak of root rot, and many a weigh-off ends in tears. This year more than just the grand prize is at stake. The Holy Grail is within reach: the world's first fifteen-hundred pound pumpkin. And Ron and Dick Wallace will stop at nothing to get it. Backyard Giants follows a tumultuous season in the life of a close-knit tribe of competitors as they chase down the ultimate pumpkin prize. In the grueling and gut-wrenching quest for truly colossal fruit, vacations are postponed, marriages are strained, and savings accounts are emptied. Backyards are converted into leafy laboratories of biogenetics and toxic chemicals-to say nothing of pumpkin sex. Riding shotgun with Ron and his father Dick, Wall Street Journal editor Susan Warren brings to life a winning and unforgettable crew of pumpkin lunatics: the newbie who shocked everyone by growing the big one last year; the pro-bono slime scientist; the groundhog assassin; and the safety trainer who risked electrocuting himself to save his patch. Funny, sharp, and engaging, Backyard Giants is a romp through a charming corner of American life, as quirky and enchanting as the big pumpkins themselves.

My Review: A lot of the books that I have been reading lately come from the library. When you walk into the Provo Library there are three displays that have the New Fiction, the New Nonfiction and the Month's Theme. I normally peruse these displays in my circuit of the library, and recently, there have been a lot of good books on the nonfiction side. Recently as I was checking out these displays, a book caught my eye. It was bright orange and had a very large pumpkin featured on the cover. The title was even more intriguing: Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever.

Now, those who know me know that I am a Fall Person. I hate Spring and despise Summer with a passion bordering on insanity. Winter's okay, but Fall is still my favorite time of the year. It is the season of falling leaves, gray, drizzly days, the days are getting shorter and everything is just better once Autumn runs around. But, the best part of it all is the fact that it is pumpkin season. Pumpkins are, in my mind, one of the best things the Good Lord saw fit to place on this green earth ... even more so than the Ultimate Cheeseburger and Seasoned Curly Fries from Jack in the Box. I love pumpkins. I love to look at pumpkins, I love to eat pumpkin, I love to cook with pumpkin ... every year my wife and I try to seek out the most sincere pumpkin patch we can find to get our jack o' lanterns for Halloween. (We have yet to find a sincere one in Utah, though, and we still pine about the one that we found one year in Redmond, Washington.) So, anyway, when I saw that this orange book was one about pumpkin growing ... big pumpkin growing I had to pick it up.

Let me first say that I had no idea that the world of competitive giant pumpkin growing was so intense. The stories that Warren tells are first, hilarious and second, heartbreaking. The growers that Warren follows put so much time and money and effort (as well as blood, sweat and tears) into their pumpkin patches and often, by the official end of the season on October 7, have nothing to show for it. Disease, Mother Nature and plain and simple good old fashioned bad luck often steal potentially world-class pumpkins from these men. I can't imagine putting that much effort into a large pumpkin only to have a possible world-record stolen out from under me because of a thieving woodchuck.

Yet ... in spite of all that ... there is something intoxicating about the idea of growing a pumpkin that is upwards of 1,200-pounds. It seems like it is something that I could really get into. We're growing a pumpkin in our backyard garden now, and I've been paying close attention to the flowers, the vine, the leaves. I know we'll never grow anything more than about 20-pounds (if we're lucky) but competitive pumpkin growing is something that I can see getting into in my autumn years.

Susan Warren's book is a wonderful window into a world that I never even knew existed. The stories she (and the growers she profiles) tell are funny and devastating and inspiring and the history of pumpkins (both giant and regular) is fascinating; for instance, the nursery rhyme "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" may have sinister origins: PPPE's wife was either an adulteress who was murdered and stuffed into a giant pumpkin shell, or an adulteress who was forced into a "pumpkin shell" or "chastity belt." Believe it or not, the story Warren tells as she follows Ron and Dick Wallace and the Rhode Island growers through the 2006 season, is engrossing and actually suspenseful, especially when it comes to the question Will someone finally grow a 1,500-pound pumpkin? This is the question on everyone's mind in the 2006 growing season and with several growers with possible contenders to that crown, you will keep turning the pages well into the night.

If you want to know more about giant pumpkin growing, check out BigPumpkins.com.

This review can also be found at Bryan's Book Blog