Preparing for Cavan's monster pumpkin contest

Growing giant pumpkins takes time, effort and skill. This year’s finest will be on view in Virginia this weekend

ANYONE who’s ever stumbled across Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (now in its 18th edition and a book that’s been variously described as “the dictionary of last resort” and “famously, fabulously useless”) will know that hidden amongst its pages is a fascinating and very comprehensive list of giants – either real, biblical or mythological. And while that’s strange enough in its own right, what’s particularly curious about this list is how many of those giants named are Irish- including Charles Byrne (also known as Charles O’Brien), “The Irish Giant”, and a man whose huge stature made him a kind of freak-celebrity during his brief lifetime in late-18th-century London.

Stranger again is the fact that, after his death, his body was sold to the famous British surgeon and anatomist John Hunter, and that to this day the skeleton of “The Irish Giant” is exhibited in the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

While I’ve never actually seen exhibit no. 223 of the Hunterian Collection (other than in photographs), I’ll shamefacedly admit to a slightly ghoulish interest. There is something strangely wonderful about the idea of an Irish giant, about a man so astonishingly outsized (somewhere between 7ft 7in and 8ft 4in, depending on whom you believe) that he seems to have defied the laws of science.

It’s also the reason why I love the idea of enormous or giant-sized pumpkins, such as those grown by Irish twin brothers Micheál and Oisín Byrne, for the Giant Pumpkin weigh-off at next weekend’s Virginia Pumpkin Festival (virginia.ie).

For while there are those, I know, who find the idea of a giant pumpkin slightly grotesque, to my mind, they are, just like Roald Dahl’s giant peach, “quite a dazzling sight”.

As well as this, it takes a monstrous amount of effort, enthusiasm and careful research to grow a giant pumpkin (particularly so in Ireland), which is why I admire those who succeed.

This summer in the OPW’s walled garden, gardeners Brian Quinn and Meeda Downey had to abandon their attempt, because it would have demanded too much of their time. “You need to keep a constant eye on the plants, watering, feeding, and cutting off the smaller pumpkins to encourage the plant to concentrate its growth on a few big specimens.

“We just didn’t have the time to do it this year. As well as that, the pumpkins seemed to be showing signs of some nutrient deficiency along with powdery mildew, so we had to give up on the idea of growing really big ones,” explains Meeda disappointedly. “Next year will be different,” promises Brian. But even if the two OPW gardeners were able to devote a considerable amount of their time to growing giant pumpkins, it’s unlikely that the results would make the weigh-in at the festival in Virginia. That’s because almost all of the really giant, Irish-grown pumpkins are grown under cover, either in glasshouses or polytunnels, rather than outdoors as the pumpkins in the OPW’s walled garden are.

In addition, the most competitive growers source their pumpkin seed in much the same way that racehorse breeders seek out distinguished bloodlines, with the seed of proven winners or record-breakers often reaching high prices across the world.

The result is ever-heavier weights and new world records being established annually – last year’s heaviest pumpkin was 1,725lbs, a record held by Christy Harp of Ohio, but this was broken just a few weeks ago by Chris Stevens of Wisconsin. His record-breaking 2010 pumpkin, you’ll be delighted (or aghast) to know, weighed in at 1,810.5lbs.

In Europe, the current record for the heaviest pumpkin is 1611lbs, as held by Mehdi Daho of France since 2009, while the Irish record is 936lbs, at present held by Micheál Byrne (one of the twin brothers from Louth previously mentioned). But records are there to be toppled, and so the weigh-in at this autumn’s Virginia Pumpkin Festival will be fraught with tension and high drama.

The stakes also have been raised considerably this year, with both European and American pumpkin growers being sponsored by the festival organisers to ship their giant pumpkins over to Ireland for the international competition (there’s also a competition in the festival for Irish-only pumpkins).

Those pumpkins coming to Virginia include one grown by Dan Bowles, President of the Wisconsin Giant Pumpkin Growers’ Club and the man who supplies giant pumpkins for the Obamas’ White House Halloween Party.

Although his giant pumpkin missed its original flight to Ireland, it has arrived safely in time for the show, making it the first American giant pumpkin to compete in a European weigh-off.

Also coming to the show are giant pumpkins and their growers from Finland, Slovakia, Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, Holland and Italy, all of whom are members of the European Giant Vegetable Growers Association (egvga.webs.com), as are the Paton twins from the UK.

We visited the Byrne twins last week, as they prepared for the show, and while we promised secrecy as regards its final size, weight and measurements, we were given permission to show you a preview of Micheál’s entry for this year.

And while I’m still not privy to what exactly it is that makes the Byrne brothers’ pumpkins so stupendously huge (at least by Irish standards), when pressed they did give me a few words of advice .

Some of these were obvious, such as the fact that you should prepare the soil very carefully with lots of manure, that you should try to grow one giant pumpkin per plant rather than a load of them and that a pumpkin plant needs a lot (and I do mean a lot) of water, sometimes up to 200 litres a day.

Both twins were also at pains to point out that you should be prepared to put in a lot of work, from the very moment the seed goes into the pot in early summer.

Luck, they both added, is hugely important. And after that? All the information that you’ll ever need on how to grow a giant pumpkin, finished Micheál somewhat cryptically, is somewhere out there if youre prepared to look hard enough.

He’s right, of course, and where better to begin than with a visit to the Pumpkin Festival in Virginia, Co Cavan, this weekend, to see some Irish giants.

* The OPW’s Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4.00pm

Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer

WHAT TO: sow, plant and do now

Sow: (Outdoors) Green manure, broad beans, hardy peas

(Under cover) Oriental leaves, salad rocket, Texsel greens

Plant:(Outdoors)Autumn onions, spring cabbage, shallots, garlic, hardy lettuce

Do:Continue harvesting storing, mulch celeriac and parsnips with straw to protect against frost, clear and manure beds, lift and store maincrop potatoes, pumpkins, onions etc, order fruit trees.