Greatest Pumpkin Pt 1

Greatest Pumpkin Pt 1

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. A third grade teacher from Olympia is re-writing a "Great Pumpkin" story of her own as the winner of this year's annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Half-Moon Bay, California.

Cindy Tobeck's giant gourd tipped the scales last week at 1,910 pounds to take first place.

Tobeck says she's been growing pumpkins competitively for 7 years...

CINDY TOBECK "It's an Atlantic Giant variety, and I got the seed from a gentleman named of Ron Wallace. He grew last year, a 2,230 pound from that and that was the North American record at the time."

Tobeck says she started with six seedlings, and this one didn't look like a champion in the early stages ...

CINDY TOBECK "The plant itself was my whimpiest seedling and soon shook that status off and got strong looking, probably within 3 weeks, it looked just like the others."

But then, she says, her healthy looking plants had to face a cooler-than-normal start to the summer ...

CINDY TOBECK "It was fairly warm at the beginning of Spring, maybe a little unseasonably warm, but then we had quite a cool late Spring and beginning of Summer. We didn't hit 80 until July 23rd which was quite late. I didn't think I had any chance whatsoever of competing with the California growers this year."

Listen up tomorrow and hear about her change of fortune and the ultimate win, that almost wasn't.

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