Where did it all begin?

I grew up with gardening – my parents both trained as horticulturalists – but I only took it on as a serious hobby when I moved down to London. One of the first gardening projects I took on was growing a giant pumpkin. My Dad gave me some seeds and Jason Johns’ ‘Growing Giant Pumpkins’ guide for Christmas in 2016 and I managed to start one off on the windowsill before planting it out the following May. I’m sure my flatmates thought I was eccentric as the plant spread across the garden, but my efforts were rewarded in October when I harvested a 28.8kg pumpkin.

What happened to the pumpkin?

I decided to enter a giant pumpkin competition, and after living in my room for a few days the pumpkin was dragged across London in a suitcase stuffed with pillows. I’d known that the competition would be stiff when I received an email saying that a forklift would be available to carry the pumpkins into the hall, but seeing the other entries in the flesh was pretty intimidating – it was embarrassing dropping mine off next to them. However, it turned out that only four of us had entered and there were cash prizes up to 5th place so I came away with £300!

It's not about the cash

I can’t claim that the same thing would happen again so don’t plant a giant pumpkin in your back garden thinking you’ll be raking in the cash in October – that was certainly just a fluke year. However, I would highly recommend having a go at growing one in whatever sized garden you have purely for the pleasure of seeing it grow. It’s a fascinating experience, and one that I’ve repeated a few times since 2017 (admittedly with mixed results). We carved our the prizewinner for Halloween and put it outside the front door. Several times we heard kids admiring it as they walked past (“whoa!”) and families taking pictures with it. If you keep the flesh when you carve it you can use it to cook all sorts of tasty dishes. We’ve made pumpkin pies, pumpkin curry, and roast pumpkin over the years. Plus you can collect the seeds from it to have another go the following spring!