Newstalk ZB
Rangitīkei farmer Luke Gilchrist’s pumpkins won’t be found in a supermarket. Gilchrist has grown a 546kg giant pumpkin on his dairy farm between Marton and Bulls. He had hoped to parade it at the Marton Harvest Festival, scheduled for April 12 but cancelled because of Cyclone Vaianu. The pumpkin is more than 4m in circumference and took Gilchrist about 200 days to grow. “It is quite a long stint. At the peak, this one was growing about 18 kilos a day for about 35 days,” Gilchrist said. “We were estimated to go over 700kg but, because we had a few cold stints this year, that trickled it down a bit.” At one point, it was growing 12cm a day in circumference, he said. The fruit was 111 days old and it took another 75-80 days of plant growth. Gilchrist said growing the pumpkin required many soil tests, three to four hours a day of pest and fungus control, fertilisers, and phosphorus and potassium to accelerate growth. The biggest pests were powdery mildew, fungicides and aphids, he said. Pumpkins thrived in warm conditions, he said. “They love the warmth; anything under 10C, they slow down in their growth.” He said Rangitīkei was ideal for growing large pumpkins because of its warmth. “It is a good region, anywhere north of here is pretty bloody good,” he said. This year, Gilchrist also grew a 16kg crown pumpkin. Gilchrist began growing giant pumpkins in 2022 after talking to another grower. That year, he grew one weighing 465kg, which was dropped 300m from a helicopter for a radio station challenge. “It was just a hobby we took up; it is a cool hobby but it is a lot of time - over 200 days of effort,” he said. The pumpkin is testing the suspension of the ute it is displayed on at McVerry Crawford in Marton. Photo / Fin Ocheduszko Brown Gilchrist’s 546kg effort this year is not his biggest. In 2024, he grew a 578kg pumpkin. The New Zealand record is held by Waikato farmer Tim Harris, who grew an 844.5kg pumpkin in 2021. A rewarding part of Gilchrist and his family’s years of growing giant pumpkins is the friends made around the world. “You meet a whole lot of people through it. It’s a small community but everyone is out to help everyone,” he said. Gilchrist has friends who grow giant pumpkins in South Africa and Australia. He said the hobby was “massive” in the United States because growers invested heavily in facilities, such as greenhouses with automatic heaters, doors and fans, which enabled sustainability. New Zealand growers were fading away from the hobby because it was hard to import seeds, Gilchrist said. In 2016, the Ministry for Primary Industries introduced regulations to make importing seeds more difficult to prevent disease. “If they can get the seeds back into New Zealand, then there will be a lot more growers popping up,” Gilchrist said. Gilchrist hoped to step away in future and have someone take over pumpkin-growing on his farm. The giant pumpkin is on display at McVerry Crawford on Wellington St, Marton, until April 21. Gilchrist said people were welcome to view it and take pictures with it before it was given to Marton School for students to cut the seeds from it. “You don’t see it every day. I think the best thing we have taken out of it, as a family, is seeing kids get photos with it,” Gilchrist said. Based on previous pumpkins, Gilchrist estimated about 95 seeds could come from this one. Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
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