In a roughly 15-square-foot patch outside Hayden Rouse’s home on Brattleboro Road in Bernardston, a massive gourd can be seen poking its orange head from a plot of land otherwise occupied by pumpkin leaves.

In the coming months, Rouse, who has been growing large pumpkins for the last eight years, will harvest his largest pumpkin yet, currently weighing more than 1,400 pounds. With the colossal squash growing at a rate of roughly 30 pounds each day, Rouse said he is considering entering the fruit of his labor in the Topsfield Fair’s 2024 All New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off, depending on when it is ready to be harvested. 

“I’m really just trying to beat my personal record, which is 1,041 pounds,” Rouse said, referring to the pumpkin he grew last year. “At this point, I just hope that it stays and keeps growing … at its peak, it grew about 50 pounds a day.”

The All New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off began at Topsfield Fair in 1984, sprouting from the fair’s Family Garden Largest Cucurbit Contest. The contest’s inaugural winning pumpkin, grown by Wayne Hackney of New Milford, Connecticut, weighed 433 pounds. In 2002, pumpkin grower Charlie Houghton of New Boston put the Topsfield Fair on the international radar when his 1,337.6 pound pumpkin was proclaimed the largest ever grown in the world at that time, earning the pumpkin farmer an entry in the Guinness World Book of Records. 

When Rouse first planted his seeds on April 1, he spent roughly four hours a day tending to the patch and engaging in the painstaking effort of burying all the patch vines to expose them to biological fertilizer. Now more than four months into the season, he said the time he spends out in his garden dwindled to roughly two hours each day. He credits his success this season to time and effort, his use of biological fertilizers, and seed genetics. 

“My biggest tip [to a novice pumpkin grower] would be find a giant pumpkin grower. If you could attend a fair, try to seek one out and try to get your seeds from the grower, because genetics are the most important. You can't go to Walmart and pick up a packet of pumpkin seeds and expect them to do anything,” Rouse said. “If you want a truly big one, burying the vines is a lot of work.”

Rouse purchased the seeds to this year’s pumpkin from Topsfield Fair Pumpkin record holder Jamie Graham, of Tyngsborough, whose 2,480 pound gourd, grown in 2022, now holds the weigh-off record. 

A landscaper by trade, Rouse was inspired to grow his first massive pumpkin after a YouTube video about the practice piqued his interest roughly eight years ago. When Rouse started dating his fiance Melissa Binette, the two began working in the patch together as a couple’s activity. He said, at times, pumpkin growing is the only setting with which he and Binette see one another, referring to his fiance as the “special touch” to a successful grow.

“When we started dating, he actually was already growing giant pumpkins, and I thought that was really cool,” Binette said. “I just became his little sidekick.”

Rouse’s massive pumpkin, which he keeps seated on a bed of sand to prevent rot, must be moved with an 18-foot toe strap and come along winch established at a nearby tree.

Though pumpkins currently stand as Rouse’s No. 1 crop, his interest in gigantic gardening has spread to other ventures, such as in 2021, when he and Binette grew a 20-foot, 2-inch tall sunflower, beating a state record set by Rouse’s friend Henry Swenson.

Rouse previously said the state record was confirmed by sending video and photographic evidence to Woody Lancaster, of Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, a nonprofit organization with a mission of cultivating “the hobby of growing giant pumpkins throughout the world by establishing standards and regulations that ensure quality of fruit, fairness of competition, recognition of achievement, fellowship and education for all participating growers and weigh-off sites.”

Despite his knack for large-scale gardening, Rouse said he does not have any plans to begin growing any other massive crops in the near future. With a 2,749 pound pumpkin grown in California last year setting a new World Record for heaviest pumpkin, Rouse said he aspires to break the world record someday in the future.

“Someday I would like to give it a shot but not for a while,” Rouse said. 

 Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.