Friday, January 4, 2019

Interview with 2,255 Pound Pumpkin Grower

Ever wondered how someone grows a one ton pumpkin?  I sat down with Eddy Zaychkowsky of Alberta, Canada at Christmas time to ask how he grew a 2,255 pound pumpkin this last season and Eddy shared it all.  He loves the idea of experimenting with different things and then sharing the data to growers in the hopes it might help all growers grow bigger.

I've visited with Eddy a few different times at his house.  He has some very nice greenhouses that he grows in.  Without the greenhouses I'm sure it would not be possible to grow as big as he does because of his short growing season and and cool nighttime temperatures.  Many of the things he is doing could not be done without the use of a greenhouse, but the principles he is using I believe apply to all growers.

Previous to this last year I believe the biggest pumpkin Eddy had grown was just over 1,100 pounds.  Anytime you can find a grower who has doubled his personal best has figured out something that works and when that grower has grown the biggest (unoffical) pumpkin ever grown in Canada you know he is doing a lot of things right.

This is year three of Eddy's experimentation.   He said he learned a lot from those first two seasons to get what he got this last year.  In year two he was having phenomenal growth but lost the pumpkin relatively early (as I recall around 1,600 pounds) as he probably blew the pumpkin up as a result of  giving the plants CO2 later in the season and the growth was too much.  This last year he stopped the CO2 around July 1st but still lost the 2145 pumpkin in September with a lot of time left to grow.

I'd like to thank Eddy for the time to meet with him and being so willing to share what he has learned from his experimentation.

Before listening to this audio file, please download the pdf.  The first three pages are a handout from Eddy explaining what he did throughout the season with his plants.  The last three pages are the three tissue tests that Eddy and I are talking about at the very beginning of the interview.

The audio interview:
Download Audio File (29 minutes):  interviewWithEddy.mp3

See the Pumpkin: