Gladys the giant pumpkin: is this the biggest fruit in the world?
At one stage, on its way to becoming a smashing success, this plucky pumpkin was packing on 40lb a day
Name: Gladys.
Age: Gladys was germinated on 19 April and pollinated on 30 June.
Weight: About 544kg (1,200lb).
Quite a big girl then. Gladys is an Atlantic giant pumpkin.
Quite a big pumpkin then. Indeed. About the weight of six or seven average-sized adults.
Appearance: A 4.3-metre (14ft) circumference, spread over 600 sq ft, with hundreds of leaves and an intricate network of secondary vines and roots. It’s also a bit gross, to be honest. To me it looks a bit like … actually, I’m not going to say. Look at the picture, you decide.
Who grew it? Ben White.
The Arsenal right-back? No, the Essex heating engineer. White is also an amateur gardener and “Vegetable Tamer”, according to his Instagram.
How did he do it? He grew Gladys in an 18-metre polytunnel, tending to her lovingly with water and nutrients, and keeping her cool with a fan. “It isn’t just about growing a massive pumpkin. It’s about seeing how far you can push a plant towards its genetic potential,” he posted. He also said he “feels like a father” to her.
Aw, that’s nice. There must be magic involved. “No tricks,” says Ben, who has a decade of big-pumpkin-growing experience and showcased one at the 2021 Chelsea flower show. At Gladys’s peak “she was piling on 40+lbs a night”, he wrote.
Did he call her Gladys because she grows at night, and has pips? I don’t know. Nor do I know if she turns into a carriage at midnight. The point is that she is massive, smashing the original target of 1,000lb.
The biggest ever? You’d think, but actually not even close. Last October, after 50 years of growing bigger and bigger pumpkins, twin brothers Stuart and Ian Paton from Lymington in Hampshire finally broke the world record with one that weighed 1,278kg with a circumference of 6.4 metres.
Surely that’s the biggest vegetable ever? Pumpkins, though treated as veg in the kitchen, are actually fruit if we’re talking horticulturally.
Those pips! Usually referred to as seeds, but yes. If we’re talking strictly veg, I give you a 62.7kg cabbage grown by Scott Robb in Alaska; a 27kg cauliflower grown by Peter Glazebrook in Nottinghamshire; an onion grown by Gareth Griffin in Guernsey that weighed an eye-watering 9kg …
Enough! But they don’t really compare to Gladys, do they? Presumably she’s being fattened up for Halloween? Actually not. White is going to take her to a competition at the Canna UK National Giant Vegetables Championship at the end of this month.
By which time she won’t have beaten the Paton brothers’ world record, will she? No, but White plans to put Gladys on display to raise money for the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance. “It gives the challenge a purpose beyond simply trying to grow an enormous pumpkin,” says White over email. “Last time our giant pumpkins (Gloria & Greta) and the community raised £1,100.”
Do say: “Smashing!”
Don’t say: “But why?!”
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