Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Princes Town farmer Sha­heed Ali is once again draw­ing at­ten­tion for his gi­ant back­yard pro­duce af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly grow­ing a mas­sive 600-pound pump­kin, sur­pass­ing the 500-pound pump­kin that made head­lines in 2023.

The enor­mous pump­kin, which now sits in Ali’s back­yard, could pos­si­bly be the largest ever grown lo­cal­ly and among the biggest grown in the Caribbean.

Ali, a re­tired Petrotrin em­ploy­ee, said grow­ing gi­ant crops has be­come both a pas­sion and a hob­by for him, but pro­duc­ing over­sized veg­eta­bles and fruits re­quires pa­tience, ded­i­ca­tion and con­stant learn­ing.

He ex­plained that more than two months of care and at­ten­tion went in­to cul­ti­vat­ing the pump­kin, in­clud­ing suf­fi­cient soil fer­til­i­ty and wa­ter sup­ply.

“I’m learn­ing from all of these things avail­able on the in­ter­net. One of the things I want to im­prove up­on is the soil fer­til­i­ty. I feel once we get more nu­tri­ents in the soil, the pump­kin is able to grow big­ger and faster in a short­er space of time,” he said.

Ali said grow­ing gi­ant pump­kins has in­volved tri­al and er­ror, with much of his knowl­edge com­ing from on­line re­search.

“This takes a lot of re­search, a lot of time, a lot of ef­fort.

“In 2024, I grew an­oth­er one just over 400 pounds, and it de­vel­oped two cracks. Last year I grew one again, and that had de­vel­oped an­oth­er crack and it just de­cayed,” he ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, wa­ter man­age­ment plays a ma­jor role in grow­ing gi­ant pump­kins suc­cess­ful­ly.

“Be­ing a pump­kin and be­ing a gi­ant grow­er, it needs plen­ty of wa­ter. Wa­ter is what ac­tu­al­ly gives it its size. I de­cid­ed to use drip ir­ri­ga­tion in­stead of over­head sprin­klers be­cause I get less grass. The wa­ter from the drip ir­ri­ga­tion is go­ing to go deep­er in­to the soil and it’s bet­ter for the pump­kin roots,” he said.

He not­ed that, un­like the 500-pound pump­kin, which had a whitish colour, the new 600-pound pump­kin is or­ange and both taller and longer. Both seeds came from Flori­da.

Ali has al­so grown sev­er­al over­sized crops, in­clud­ing a two-and-a-half-pound lime, a near­ly 100-pound wa­ter­mel­on, a two-and-a-half-pound toma­to and a 27-inch cu­cum­ber.

“Any­thing I come across that is big, large, strange, dif­fer­ent. I am try­ing it.”

De­spite his lat­est achieve­ment, Ali said his ul­ti­mate goal is to grow a pump­kin weigh­ing more than 1,000 pounds.

“I will be go­ing for that next year be­cause I got more in­for­ma­tion on how to im­prove the fer­til­i­ty of the soil,” he said con­fi­dent­ly.

The pump­kin is not ed­i­ble, so he plans to keep it on dis­play for a while and al­low cu­ri­ous peo­ple to vis­it and take pho­tos. The heav­i­est pump­kin ever record­ed was grown in Eng­land and weighed 2,819 pounds.