How do you Grow a Record-Breaking Pumpkin? It Starts with the Soil…

Working with the Soil Microbiome for Record Breaking Pumpkins

Record breaking pumpkins are hard to miss. Weighing in at over 2,000 pounds, these gargantuan gourds are a great way to celebrate the fall season. But how do you grow a record-breaking pumpkin? Well, if you’ve been following along with the ReGen Blog, it might not surprise you that the answer is in the soil!

Meet Ron Wallace, Rhode Island native and second generation giant pumpkin farmer. Wallace holds several records, “including being the first to grow a pumpkin that surpassed 1,500 pounds in 2006, and the first to break 2,000 pounds in 2012” [1]. In 2015, he grew a whopping 2,230.5 pounder, the largest in North America at the time. He’s truly a giant in the field of giant pumpkin growing. So what’s his secret?

The Importance of Soil Health

Whenever someone goes down the rabbit hole of trying to grow the biggest, most nutrient dense, or most flavorful crops while sticking to organic practices, they always tend to find their way to soil health. Wallace is no exception. You don’t have to dig too deep into his website to find this statement in his about us page “we do not think of soil as ‘dirt,’ and neither should you! Healthy soil is ‘alive’ and contains billions of microscopic organisms. Soil is the most diverse ecosystem on planet earth.” [2] This is because they take the time to experiment with all sorts of different methods. When they try working with the soil microbiome, they see astounding results and continue down the regenerative path. Wallace now sells an organic fertilizer mix with a key ingredient: Mycorrhizal Fungi!

Mycorrhizal Fungi: A Symbiotic Relationship

Mycorrhizal Fungi colonize plant roots in a symbiotic relationship, trading the nutrients they pull from the mineral and organic matter in the soil for sugars (called root exudates) produced by the plant during photosynthesis. When given the chance, they link up with all the plants in your garden, forming a dense logistical network of mycorrhizal and other fungi in the soil. This symbiotic relationship keeps the plant flush with nutrients and disease-free, stopping infection in the already-colonized root zone. This both allows the plant to continue developing its nutrient-dense fruit (in this case, the giant pumpkin) while allowing it to grow until the late part of the season due to disease resistance. Clearly, mycorrhizal fungi are a key component of record-breaking pumpkin success.

Compost Tea to Tie it all Together

Wallace also now sells compost tea brewers and brews on his website. Brewing compost tea is a commonly used method for infusing soil with the beneficial microbial communities your plants need to thrive. It’s not just mycorrhizal fungi alone that make the difference between a giant pumpkin and a truly massive one — it’s the entirety of the soil food web. Without decomposers like bacteria and fungi to break down the parent material and organic matter in the soil, the mycorrhizal fungi would have nothing to trade to the plant in exchange for root exudates. Without the bacterial and fungal predators like flagellates, nematodes, and amoebae, there would be no nutrients being secreted in plant-available form. Without the bacterial glues and the fungal hyphae, the soil will have no structure or aeration, suffocating the delicate mycorrhizal fungi and giving way to harmful anaerobic microbes.

So the next time you’re thinking of growing a colossal fall vegetable of any kind in your home garden or farm, make sure you have the right tools for the job. Start with a Living Soil Test to find out more about your microbial community. Then, get seasonal amendments shipped to your door including mycorrhizal fungal spores, premium compost teeming with microscopic life, and soil foods to keep them going.

[1] How to Grow a World-Record Breaking Pumpkin — Rhode Island Monthly (rimonthly.com)

[2] About Wallace Organic Wonder & Ron Wallace Organic Fertilizer (wallacewow.com)