The Connecticut Department of Agriculture, the state agency that one would think regulated vegetable growth, has no idea when giant vegetable season starts.
As anyone who has worked at a weekly newspaper in a small town can tell you, giant vegetable season begins on the day the first person calls to announce they have "one helluva zucchini out here that you folks oughta get a picture of."
This usually happens in late August or early September.
When the picture of the caller, most often an old man in a plaid shirt and grimy bib overalls, is published holding a squash the size of a banjo, the phone starts ringing nonstop. The calls are from people outraged that such a puny squash was pictured in the newspaper. Why they've got one bigger than a bass fiddle sitting on their back porch, and they personally know a man who dries his squashes, chops a door in them and sells them as doghouses.
Here in Fairfield County we are fortunate to have the two premier giant vegetable growers in the state, if not the nation: Ray Leonzi of Trumbull and Dr. David Garrell of Fairfield.
Both grow giant pumpkins, and Leonzi currently holds the state giant pumpkin record for a 1,081-pound monster he grew last year. The gourd took the record with a last-minute growth spurt that beat the existing state record, set just two weeks earlier, by 23 pounds.
Garrell held the state record in 2002, and is consistently among the giant pumpkin giants, although he has yet to break the 1,000-pound mark.
Both Leonzi and Garrell will be on hand for the eagerly awaited giant pumpkin competition Oct. 1, at Penfield Pavilion in Fairfield. But giant pumpkin fans shouldn't expect to see new records this year.
"It been a tough year," says Leonzi. "Two weeks ago I lost a pumpkin that was over 700 pounds. It just split from growing too fast."
The rains of late June and early July, and then the cold nights of late August, were tough conditions for growing giant pumpkins, Leonzi said. Many small pumpkins just rotted on the vine after the rain.
"I've still got two over 600," he said, "but it's nothing like last year. They've pretty much stopped growing."
Leonzi is hoping other giant pumpkin growers are having the same problems.
Planting pumpkins, giant or normal, is a counterintuitive process. Instead of planting the seed with the point pointing up as any normal person might assume, it is placed in the ground point down. Weird.
Once the plant is up and has flowers, it is time to pollinate. This is done by getting up early in the morning, choosing several male flowers and gently shaking them over female flowers (don't ask us how to tell the difference). The pollen falls like snow onto the waiting female petals. (Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?) It is the female flower, after all, that has the chubby bud underneath that eventually turns into the pumpkin.
It is a good idea to get pumpkins picked early, because a Balkan folk legend (and we swear this is true) holds that a pumpkin or watermelon that is left on the vine more than 10 days after Christmas will turn into a vampire.
Fortunately, pumpkin and watermelon vampires are said not to have any teeth, and so are not particularly dangerous. Mostly they roll around at night making a noise like "brrrl, brrrl."
One can only imagine the havoc resulting if one of Leonzi's giant pumpkins went vampire. The "brrrl-ing" alone would drive people crazy.
Charles Walsh's column appears Tuesday and Friday. You can reach him by phone at 330-6217 or by e-mail at cwalsh@ctpost.com
http://www.connpost.com/columnists/ci_4360500
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