Big is good but heavy is better for giant pumpkin growers

October 12, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

CANFIELD

Some people might say Matt Brungard is a little bit, well, out of his gourd for his choice in hobbies.

After all, he grows pumpkins.

But he’s really good at it, and the pumpkins he grows are really, really big. No, make that huge.

So huge, in fact, that he took home the top prize Saturday at the Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Grower’s annual weigh-off at Parks Garden Center. He received $5,000 for his efforts.

Pumpkin growers from at least three states brought their gigantic gourds to the contest, where bigger is better, but heavy is best. Brungard, 46, a fifth-generation farmer from New Middletown, topped them all with an entry that tipped the scales at a whopping 1,951 pounds, earning a standing ovation from the pumpkin enthusiasts who’d come to watch.

“I’m shocked,” a beaming Brungard said after his winning weight was announced. “I didn’t think I’d do it.”

Brungard’s entry barely bested a pumpkin grown by Mark Clementz of Howley, Mich., which weighed in at 1,947.5 pounds. Clementz still set the Michigan state record, though.

Dave Stelts, OVGPG board member, said it was the first time in the 20-year history of the local weigh-off that the 1,900-pound barrier had been broken. The average weight of the top 10 pumpkins at the weigh-off was 1,731 pounds, which Stelts said was a world record.

The Pennsylvania state record also was set Saturday at the OVGPG event with a 1,821.5-pound pumpkin grown by Larry and Gerri Checkon, who’d come from central Pennsylvania. They placed third in the competition. Stelts and his wife, Carol, who live in Enon Valley, Pa., held the previous Pennsylvania record at 1,807.5 pounds.

Brungard’s pumpkin was the heaviest ever weighed at the local contest but was shy of the Ohio state record of 2,008 pounds, which was set earlier this year near Cincinnati. The world record is a 2,091-pounder grown in Switzerland earlier this year.

Brungard, a married father of five, said this was just his third year in the world of competitive pumpkin growing. Two years ago, his heaviest entry was 1,015 pounds, and last year, he put in a pumpkin that weighed 1,333 pounds.

The only thing that might have been faster than his rise to the top of the pumpkin patch might have been the growth of his winning entry. At one point, the winner put on more than 30 pounds a day for 30-plus days, he said.

Even though he’s been involved with agriculture all his life, Brungard said he’s learned a lot about his new hobby.

“It teaches you a lot,” he said, just before his winning entry was put on the scale. “I learned a lot about plant nutrition and soil health.”

Tim Parks, OVGPG board member, said there were 55 entries in the local contest this year, which was 20 more than last year. Interest in growing giant pumpkins hasn’t reached the point of being a frenzy, but it’s on the upswing, he said.

“It’s the competition,” Parks said, explaining why more people are entering the world of giant pumpkins. “Everybody likes to grow something bigger than the next guy.”

But it’s not a cut-throat world by any means. Growers who’ve been competing for decades are always willing to reach out to new growers, hoping to generate interest among newer competitors — even though they know that those newcomers might knock off some of the longtime kingpins, said Quinn Werner of Saegers-town, Pa., an OVGPG board member and six-time winner of the local contest.

He said the club has seminars every year, aimed at teaching new growers the tricks of the trade.

“Our club works really hard to bring new people in,” said Werner, who had three pumpkins in the top 15 entries this year. “When somebody in the club wins, we all win. It’s not about the individual, it’s about the club.”

Brungard said the trend among giant-pumpkin growers has been to grow pumpkins indoors, in a greenhouse, because it’s a more controlled environment. His, he said, was grown outdoors in what was once his grandmother’s garden.

“To grow them outdoors is kind of a feat any more,” he said.

And although he applied plenty of science and technology in his approach, Brungard said he wasn’t above seeking a little divine intervention.

“I pray over them,” he said of the pumpkins in his patch. “Literally, I do.”

Apparently, it works.