The Great Glebe Giant Pumpkin
This is a short story about an offer made to the Gardening Club last springtime. A year 2
boy came up to me one afternoon with a big smile on his face. (He always had a big smile
on his face!), he asked me if I would like some pumpkin seedlings that he had been
growing at home. Without a second thought I told him that I would be delighted to
accept his kind offer and made a comment that if his pumpkins grew as big as his smile,
then we would have the biggest pumpkin EVER!
The seedlings duly arrived, all five of them, so after a discussion with the rest of the
gardening club members, we thought we would make a “pumpkin patch” to
accommodate the very healthy looking seedlings. This turned out to be our first error of
judgement. We made a patch approximately twice the size of a hula hoop, but more
about that later.
The summer as you know was as fickle as British summers can be. First it was too hot
and dry and with a hosepipe ban announced so the rains came fast and furious!
The gardeners gardened in all weathers as true gardeners do! We had one session started
quite well and ended in an enormous thunderstorm. We got totally soaked. However this
did not stop us tending our garden, and looking hopefully at our pumpkin patch. After a
near miss with the strimmer, wielded by our grounds men we “fenced off the pumpkins in
the hope that they would be safe from all evils. Each week we watched, but by the end of
July, although the plants had grown a bit, there were only 1 or two flower buds. Oh well,
school summer holidays bound and we put the thought of any kind of pumpkin well and
truly to the back of our heads.
September came round all too soon. I came in for the training day to “do things that have
to be done”, and had a quick look round the garden. The cabbages that we had left to
grow had done their job, and were rather large but amazingly tasty. I then glanced over
to the pumpkin patch and stopped dead in my tracks. It was a good job there were no
children about as the surprise uttered from my otherwise squeaky clean vocabulary was
one of Oh My…. Well you can guess the rest. There nestled in the middle of the patch
was one granddaddy of a pumpkin, still green but very obviously much bigger than we
expected. The next day the children saw it, their response was similar!
We watched and waited patiently for our pumpkin to ripen and during Harvest week we
cut it and weighed it. The total weight at the time was 21.5kg. Yes the weight of a small
child!! In fact we then decided it would be fun for the rest of the school to guess the
weight of this pumpkin. I weighed about 15 children before I found one that was the
exact match. During Harvest Festival we announced that 5M had guessed correctly and
awarded them a class prize to share. So now we had to find a home for the beast. What
better and fairer way to do this, than to have a raffle. (Winner to arrange own transport,
and all proceeds to gardening equipment). We raised a grand total of £49.00 and with a
sigh of relief watched as Lucy and her mum wheeled it home in the wheelbarrow.
Now you would think that would be the end of the story, but no, if you wish to carry on
reading you will now find out exactly what happened next.
Lucy and her brother Daniel spent half term week with their family cutting, scooping,
sorting and carving all things pumpkin like. They produced a fabulous Jack O Lantern
which they brought in to school to show us. They also presented us with a bag full of
pumpkin seeds. Now I think you can guess what is coming next….
We will be planting the seeds in the spring of 2013 in the hope of raising a number of
seedlings that we will then off up for sale to whoever would like them. (All monies to
gardening club), but I think you may have worked that one out.
I am tempted to suggest that anyone buying a seedling, and successfully raises a Giant
Pumpkin can enter into a competition to see who can grow the biggest. BUT I think Mr
Alford would prefer it if we did not over run the school during October 2013 with a mass
of Giant Pumpkins and or Jack O Lanterns. Having said that, it would be interesting to
know how many were grown and how much they weighed…….