LINACY, N.S.
Tom Dudka has waited a long time to beat his personal best.
He thinks he’s done it this year.
“My personal best was 991 pounds, 14 years ago,” said the Linacy farmer, who is known in Pictou County as the man who grows giant pumpkins.
“I’m thinking I’m gonna break a thousand pounds, I’d be surprised if I don’t (but) once you hit the scales then you know for sure.”
There will likely be bigger pumpkins when he enters the annual Windsor-West Hants Pumpkin Weigh-off In Windsor this coming weekend, but he isn’t concerned about that.
“My biggest thing is I want to break my personal record.”
Dudka started germinating seeds in April, planted them in May and the work didn’t stop once they started growing; instead, it became more intensive.
“It’s like raising a kid – three, four hours a day once you get them growing. You got so many obstacles, you got bugs that destroy ’em and if you don’t keep them covered, the rain will rot them.”
The last week of growing might be the toughest: getting so close to the competition, and worrying about something bad happening after all that work.
“This is our nightmare – the last week,” Dudka said. “You could have a raccoon go in there and burrow a hole right through them to get the seeds. You could have it rotting underneath and you don’t know about it.”
But if all goes as expected, this coming Friday, the pumpkin will be lifted up with an excavator and placed on a pallet, then loaded onto a truck for transport. The excavator, forklift and even the truck are on loan from Marinues Verhagen, owner of Verhagen Demolition.
Dudka is also intent on seeing if the cucumbers he started growing this year might make him a Canadian record-holder.
“I could never grow cucumbers. I went out in the first week in June this year and put two seeds in the ground. I was so involved in my pumpkins I never looked at them until the first week of August and I said ‘wow’.”
The official Canadian record for giant cukes is 12.38 pounds (the world record is 24 pounds).
Dudka said he has three cucumbers in contention.
“One fella I know thinks one of them is around 15 pounds, so one of these will give the record to me.”
It’s ‘Trump’ by a good margin
Tom Dudka had four giant pumpkins growing this summer and he named them after world political leaders and watched to see which one would grow the best.
“I did it just for fun,” he said.
• U.S. president Donald Trump appears to be the winner, and should give Dudka a personal best, weighing in at more than 1,000 pounds by the time it’s finished growing, he figures.
• Putin, named after the Russian president, is in second place, somewhere in the range of 850-880 pounds.
• Trudeau is third, at close to 800 pounds. “One guy on the street said if you want Trudeau to grow, sit there and take some selfies with it.”
• Kim Jong-un, the so-called Supreme Leader of North Korea, is dead on the ground. Literally. The top of the pumpkin – where the stem is located – split open and is rotting in the dirt.
