September 28, 2010
Horticulture student Brandon Huber has shown what a lot of care and effort can accomplish in the garden — twin 600-pound pumpkins!
 Visit Temple University Ambler student Brandon Huber’s home during Halloween this season and you might be left a little dumbfounded. Seeing a 600-pound jack-o-lantern would do that to anyone.
Huber, who is majoring in Horticulture in Temple’s School of Environmental Design at Ambler, has spent his spring and summer diligently working to grow not one but two mammoth pumpkins, each weighing in at a staggering 600 pounds. The monster gourds are now a star attraction at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Meadowbrook Farms in Abington Township.
“I started the pumpkins from seed in starter pots on April 25 and they went into the ground on May 5. The two pumpkins are now both over 600 pounds and one is still growing,” said Huber, 21, a Northeast Philadelphia resident and graduate of Archbishop Ryan High School. “The pumpkins are on two different plants and there’s just one pumpkin for each vine. You need to pinch off the first few buds to allow the vine to become more established so that it will have the energy to feed the pumpkin.”
Huber said the pumpkin seeds used to grow the two pumpkins were definitely of excellent genetic stock, which helped them get so large. Once one of the pumpkins had grown to more than 300 pounds, he said, he knew that they had potential to become something truly special.
“They grow so fast. At their peak, they were growing 15 to 20 pounds a day — some can actually grow as much as 40 to 50 pounds a day,” said Huber, who has worked in outdoor sales, spring production, and the greenhouse at Meadowbrook since 2009. “I actually started the vines on the opposite ends of the garden — it was almost a race to see which one would reach the middle first and which would grow the largest. Now they are sitting right next to each other.”
Both pumpkins, Huber said, will be picked on Friday, October 8, and loaded using special equipment specifically designed to move large pumpkins for transport to the “Pumpkin Madness Festival” at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown on Saturday, October 9, where they will go up against every other giant pumpkin in the region.
“It’s definitely been a lot of fun watching them grow. It’s also been a lot of work, a lot of fine detail maintenance and watering,” he said. “I think the heat actually served them well; the hot dry season cut down on disease and fungus. I was also able to control the water that the plants were getting a little better. I think we’re going to see a lot of big pumpkins this year.”
Once the weigh-off is done, Huber expects at least one of the pumpkins will remain on display at Meadowbrook. By Halloween, however, he plans to have both of them sitting proudly in his front yard.
“I’d like to carve one as a jack-o-lantern,” he said. “I’ll also collect the seeds as there is a high demand for seed from giant pumpkins.”
While two 600-pound pumpkins is certainly out of the ordinary, Huber is no stranger to unusual and exotic plants. His parents have always had a garden and his grandparents owned farmland. He began collecting cacti and succulents at the age of 6. A career in horticulture seemed like a foregone conclusion.
 “I’d go to the (Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s) Philadelphia (International) Flower Show when I was young and I loved the ‘Horticourt’ with its diversity of plants,” he said. “Some of the cacti that I saw as a kid are still shown each year and now I know a lot of the growers.”
Huber will personally enter the Philadelphia International Flower Show for the fifth time in 2011. During the fall and spring semesters at Temple University Ambler, he will also help prepare plants for Temple University Ambler’s 2011 Flower Show exhibit through a Horticulture Directed Studies Course in the Ambler Campus Greenhouse.
In 2009, Huber won Best of Show among the individual entries in the Horticourt with a “Corpse Plant,” a six-foot tall plant that, as the name might suggest, has a rather unique odor.
“I added the plant to my personal collection years ago. When it first bloomed, I knew it was the perfect plant to enter,” he said. “At home, I keep a garden as well. I have a fig tree, which has grown pretty large and a grape arbor. I also keep a lot of tropical plants, aroids mostly. I have a lot of interest in unusual plants.”
Huber additionally maintains a community garden at Benjamin Rush State Park, growing a variety of vegetables for personal enjoyment and to donate to area food pantries.
Huber came to Temple with an Associate’s degree in Liberal Arts from the Community College of Philadelphia with the goal of continuing to expand on his own plant knowledge developed over years of working at garden centers, nurseries, and greenhouses.
“I knew I’d come to Temple since my junior year in high school. After looking at other programs and speaking to a lot of people, I felt the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture had the best program for where the field is heading,” he said. “I think what I’d like to do is explore plant hybridizing and plant genetics and breeding After watching these pumpkins grow so big, I want to explore how to grow them even larger.”
With two 600 –pound pumpkins under his belt, Huber said he’s ready for his next challenge.
“I definitely want to try again. There are soil amendments and more preparation to the patch I could have done that I think would have gotten better results,” he said. “This year, I was shooting for 500 pounds. Next year, I’m going for 1,000!”
For more information on Brandon Huber, contact 267-468-8108 or duffyj@temple.edu.
CONTACT: James Duffy, 267-468-8108, duffyj@temple.edu release available by e-mail |
