A pumpkin almost big enough to spirit away Cinderella has claimed top honours at Motueka’s giant pumpkin competition.
Held at Hotel Motueka on Sunday, the event drew about 30 entries from growers who had put in months of spade work to compete for the day’s largest, most perfect, ugliest and best decorated gourds.
Event organiser and gardening enthusiast John de Jong took out the top prize with a mammoth 108kg cucurbit, well and truly squashing the competition. Hannah’s 38kg pumpkin placed second, with M Green’s 30kg entry coming in third.
On opposite ends of the scale, Kevin Booth took out the most perfect pumpkin category, while Alex McKinstroy had the dubious honour of the ugliest pumpkin accolade.
Meanwhile, some pumpkin artistry came to the fore, with Arlo and Ollie’s pumpkin scarecrow winning the under-10 category, Annie’s “Goodnight Kiwi” taking out the 10 to 15-year-old category, and B Green’s glossy ladybird pumpkin winning the adult section. Erena Wraight received a special mention for the creativity of her “overworked tradie”, depicting a collapsed figure in a wheelbarrow, his pumpkin bumcrack on luminous display.
Eleven-year-old Annie says her family’s pumpkins grew from last year’s seeds that had sprouted in the compost heap. Although the Goodnight Kiwi predates her by decades, she says her mum gave her a run-through of its significance.
The giant pumpkin competition was resurrected by John and his friends Peter Hobson and Neil Jackson, who remember fondly the Māpua-based event that ceased about a decade ago. Last year marked its return, and John says that, despite another rainy day, it was a great event and “exactly what we were hoping for”.
“Our original purpose was to organize an event that would have young and old have a go at growing a plant, take care of it and be creative.”
John encourages anyone interested in growing giant pumpkins to visit https://giantpumpkins.co.nz/ for local advice and to start gearing up for next year’s competition.
