Growers of Giant Pumpkins May Hold Clues to Improved Crop Yields Shared techniques used to grow giant gourds may help regular food industry get bigger yields. The giant pumpkins grown by Ron Wallace in his garden in Rhode Island won’t magically appear in Linus’ pumpkin patch at midnight on Halloween, but they will be seen by a lot of people. Wallace’s pumpkins takes months of 40-hour weeks, tender care and vigilance to reach their monumental size. Wallace Grows First-Ever Pumpkin Over 2,000 Pounds Wallace has been growing award winning giant pumpkins for years and is the first to ever break the 2,000-pound barrier with a 2,009-pound pumpkin in 2012. This year his has broken another record with a 2,230 pound pumpkin. It is the biggest in the …show more content…
The current world record holder, Beni Meier of Switzerland, holds the Guinness World record from 2014 with a 2,323-pound pumpkin, which was grown from a Wallace seed. Other growers hope that seeds from Wallace’s pumpkin patch will yield them comparable results. Wallace not only grows giant pumpkins, he also grows giant sunflowers, other gourds and tomatoes. The largest tomato was over five pounds. His sunflowers grow to over 18-feet tall. Their Research and Techniques Could Lead to Better Crop Yields Although most growers of these giant crops are not full time farmers and are therefore considered “amateurs,” they spend a lot of time researching genetics, soil and chemistry, trying different techniques to obtain their large specimens. After spending more than two decades growing crops, Wallace has just recently released Wallace Organic Wonder, a product based on the growing program he has developed. The main ingredient he feels that is beneficial is mycorrhizal fungi, which he says is a superfungus that helps deliver nutrients and water to