This city dweller has caught pumpkin growing fever

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON - One resident's unusual hobby that started out as an homage to the Halloween classic "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," has provided one downtown neighborhood with a Great Pumpkin of its own.

Culminating a yearlong effort to eclipse the 420-pound giant pumpkin he grew last fall, Patrick Pucino's hard work and diligence resulted in a 500-pounder - grown right in the backyard of his South Street home and just in time for Halloween.

Pucino said he hopes the pumpkin's presence on his front doorstep will provide a festive decoration for trick-or-treaters tonight. It won't be a jack-o'-lantern or a pumpkin pie, he noted, because it's too tough for carving.

The success of last year's effort, he said, fueled his interest in growing another pumpkin of the giant variety this year. It is a task that requires weeks of soil preparation and constant attention from the time the seed goes underground in April until the giant gourd is full-grown in the fall. His message to other area residents looking to dabble in the giant vegetable trade: you don't have to be an expert to have fun and see results.

"I have a pretty small plot of land, I don't have a farm, my backyard is probably about 400 square feet," Pucino said. "People should know that they don't have to have a farm to do this, they don't need acres of land to grow a giant pumpkin."

The time-consuming process of growing the massive fruit, Pucino said, began last spring when he purchased seeds for a giant pumpkin from Rhode Island in an online auction for $50. In order to support its growth, Pucino said he pretreated the soil in his backyard with nutrients and buried 80 feet of heating cable in concentric circles around where he planned to plant.

"Soil preparation is the biggest thing. You have to see what kind of soil you have, whether it be sand or clay, and put the necessary organic matter into it to help the pumpkin grow," Pucino said. "Anybody can put the seed in the ground and have fun with it, they don't have to go to the extremes that I do."

Over the next six months, Pucino wrapped his emerging pumpkin in plastic to keep it from freezing during the early spring months and spent the unusually rainy summer feeding it a steady diet of water, powdered fish and powdered seaweed; a concoction he said is essential to generating the pumpkin's giant size.

After seeing how much fun he had growing last year's pumpkin, Pucino said the friends and family members he sent seeds to last October planted giant pumpkins of their own and in return, sent him some literature on how to perfect the art.

"A lot of people were nice enough to give me books to read, and I learned from last year's mistakes," Pucino said.

He learned, for example, to spray fertilizer only at night or in the early morning because doing so during the daytime allows sunlight to burn it away.

When the time came to cut the stem and move his giant pumpkin out front for the neighborhood to see, Pucino said his wife, Angela Pucino, elected to use a different approach. Rather than rolling the huge squash along on wooden boards as they did last year, she enlisted the help of the couple's Chevy Prizm.

"She went out, surrounded it with plastic, slammed the plastic in the trunk of the car and dragged it right out to the front of the house," Pucino said.

Pucino said he is eagerly looking forward to preparing for and caring for next year's giant pumpkin, when he and his expectant wife will have a newborn baby to nourish as well.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.