Published: October 14, 2006 12:38 am      

Local men grow the biggest pumpkin in Iowa

CLINTON — Cucurbita maxima: Latin for “big ol’ pumpkin.”

There was no doubt — Dan Carlson and Marc Petersen knew the pumpkin they had “raised” from a baby shoot was on track to be a winner at the Midwest Pumpkin Growers Association annual competition in Anamosa. They’d measured the circumference of the gourd, and found it was 188 inches around.

Circumference generally is a good way to estimate a pumpkin’s weight, and this pumpkin’s whopping girth translated to more than 1,200 pounds, if it followed the “girth equals weight” rule.

Carlson’s wife, Beth, said Dan transplanted the seedling out to the garden in May when it was a mere sprout. Over the summer, the Carlsons and Petersen lovingly tended to the sprouts growing in the garden, watching as each began posting 30 pounds-per-day gains.

By August, the duo, partners in record-setting growing efforts for three years, knew one particular pumpkin held promise as a real prize winner. By the time they harvested it, cutting the vine and having it hoisted by a forklift onto a trailer for the trip to Anamosa, they guessed it was well more than the 1,200 pounds they’d originally guessed.

At the weigh-in, their hunch was proven — the enormous fruit tipped the scales at 1,275.5 pounds. Not only was that the weightiest pumpkin of the day, the Atlantic Giant was a record for both the Anamosa weigh-in and the state of Iowa. It is also the 12th largest pumpkin grown in North America this year.

All that pumpkin from one tiny seed — a seed given to the men by a fellow grower from the East Coast who’d had good luck with his Atlantic Giants.

Carlson and Petersen won $2,500 and the traveling trophy for their effort, not to mention bragging rights. They attribute their success to the attention given the pumpkins as they matured, not to mention the leaf compost and “donations from Blue Hyll Dairy cows” Carlson used to feed their pumpkins.

With one first-place prize under their belt, Carlson and Petersen are taking a second “smaller” pumpkin to a weigh-in in Stillwater, Minn., and hoping for more success.