Colorado Voices
Inside the high-stakes world of competitive pumpkin growing with Colorado record-holder, Brad Bledsoe
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Inside the high-stakes world of competitive pumpkin growing
Inside the high-stakes world of competitive pumpkin growing with Colorado record-holder, Brad Bledsoe
Colorado Voices
Inside the high-stakes world of competitive pumpkin growing with Colorado record-holder, Brad Bledsoe
Clip | 4m 58sVideo has Closed Captions
Inside the high-stakes world of competitive pumpkin growing with Colorado record-holder, Brad Bledsoe
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipinitially I started growing in the front yard.
my wife suggested, like, why don't we put a pumpkin there?
And I was like, well, why don't we try to grow a big pumpkin?
I just kind of like threw it in there.
Let it grow.
Didn't really know any of the the technical science on how to do it really well.
it ended up being 195 pounds So I was like, well, let's take it to a way off and see how we do.
and we get there.
And my daughter, who is four at the time, she goes, dad, why is your pumpkin the smallest one here?
that hit my competitive bone it was just game on from there.
we went from doing nothing to trying to do everything.
I have a whole system here that once I fill up this tank, it takes a reading of what the pH is and then either uses a pH down or up to get it to the perfect pH, so that when I run this fertilizer that we have a maximum amount of nutrient uptake.
gardening in general is kind of like therapy for me.
you go out there and you can kind of forget about the problems of the world, I grew up in Windsor, but when I was in fourth grade, I shot out all the street lights with my B.B.
gun.
So my mom said, hey, you can't have any spare time ever.
from, fourth grade all the way through high school, I worked on a farm with my grandpa.
that was kind of my first introduction to, plants.
Cutting it off the vine.
Kind of.
Not great.
It's probably like losing a kid to college.
all the pumpkin seeds are labeled with their final weight, and then the growers last name.
So like this one's a 2168.
Werner.
that was grown in Kansas last year and grew in a state record.
So that's kind of why it's in the, in the batch.
I have, like, sunflower seeds and then, like, a bunch of pumpkin ones.
I could probably grow giant pumpkins for the next 50 years off of what I have, I've been worried about this lift for a week now.
is the pumpkin going to go light?
Is it going to go heavy?
Does it have a rock spot?
Is everything going to be okay?
Are we going to get to the way off and and be able to compete.
That's.
these big giants are giant babies.
Like things go wrong and they go wrong quickly if they're not averted.
and we'll put some foam underneath and see what this weight is.
first and foremost, prestige is on the line, like It's 3 or 4 hours a day that I'm either in here watering or doing some sort of vine maintenance building a big greenhouse and putting as much money as we have into it, we do want to recoup some of those costs.
It's not it's not something I'm doing to try to make money, but let's just try to break even or make it close my favorite thing of all of, of pumpkin growing is actually having this thing on the back of my truck or the back of the trailer, and just seeing people's faces, like, light up, like, they'll be like, hey, what is that?
And then they'll drive over and then the other person's like, that's a giant pumpkin.
And they're like, no way.
And then they'll slow down get right behind the trailer and they're like, yeah, that is a pumpkin.
And then they're you can see them taking pictures of it and smiling, and then they drive past in, given the thumbs up.
it's almost like their cares and worries, dissolve for those two minutes that they're driving by on the highway or in the city.
Good.
Yeah.
just seeing other people's joy of what you're able to grow is, is phenomenal, Sometimes.
Yeah.
Oh, dude.
You're good man.
Yes.
So.
Yeah.
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