Dreaming big – Godfrey girl hoping for 1,500 pound pumpkin next year

Jeff Green | Nov 05, 2015

While most gardeners are satisfied if they grow at least one pumpkin big enough to make into a Jack O'Lantern for Halloween, Ashley Hickey is more ambitious .

The 13-year-old farm girl, who lives in the Cole Lake area between Parham and Godfrey and attends St. Patrick's School in Harrowsmith, is a member of the GVGO (Giant Vegetable Growers of Ontario), whose members have grown 100 plus pound cabbages and 1400 plus pound Hubbard squashes.

Giant pumpkins are Ashley's specialty, and the weigh-in at the Prince Edward County Pumpkinfest in Wellington is the moment of truth for her every year.

Last year her pumpkin came in 4th place at 877 pounds, and it was larger than any of the pumpkins grown in Prince Edward County and vicinity. The three larger pumpkins in the competition were grown in Eganville, Shawville and Pembroke.

“This year I wanted to get over the 1,000 pound mark,” said Ashley who grew her pumpkin from a seed from her 2014 pumpkin.

When it came time to bring her pumpkin to the festival this year, the family tractor was not big enough to lift it onto a pickup, and a special harness had to be used to ease it onto the truck.

The result – 1,011 pounds. The competition has grown so fierce at the Wellington Pumpkinfest however, that Ashley only received a 7th place ribbon this year, but again all the pumpkins that were larger had traveled a long way. The winner, at 1654 pounds, came from Ormstown, Quebec and used seeds that came from a 1,873 pound pumpkin.

To put Ashley's pumpkin into local context, the largest pumpkin from Prince Edward County came in at 784 pounds.

Incredibly, the Hickey pumpkin patch is a small plot of land, maybe 30 feet by 10 feet, with black, rich soil from all the manure and compost that they use to enrich it. Ashley starts her large pumpkins indoors in late April and puts out only the strongest plant, but she does not cull off all the other pumpkins aside from the one that establishes itself as the largest one.

“I like to bring 300 pound pumpkins to the Perth Fair with my friend,” she said, “that's also a lot of fun.”

She was pretty nervous when it came time for the weigh-in in Wellington because, “Although I knew it was close, or I hoped it was close to 1,000 pounds, I did not know for sure it was going to make it. I was pretty happy that it was that heavy,” she said.

Ashley started growing large pumpkins about three years ago, with encouragement from her parents, learning about what seeds to use, how much water to add, how much to fertilize, all of the ins and outs of growing giant pumpkins.

“The people I have met at Pumpkinfest have all been nice about sharing ideas about how to grow,” she said.

The giant pumpkins do not have a massive amount of seed, and Ashley said that she gives 100 seeds to the GVGO for their archive, and saves enough for herself. Although she was willing to share the growing techniques she used, that did not necessary mean she was prepared to hand over any of her spare seeds.

“It's not just the seed, anyway; it's also about how much water and how much fertilizer and what the weather is like during the summer. Also there is the problem of frost in the spring and the fall. I noticed, when we went to Wellington on October 17, that closer to Lake Ontario, they have had no frost at all.”

Her goal next year?

“1,500 pounds.”