You should have no trouble finding a pumpkin to put on the porch this autumn; growers say it’s been a great year. The grower of the state’s record pumpkin this year, however, isn’t even a farmer. It was grown in a
garden that’s 30 by fifty feet, next to the trailer court. Amy Krug is married to the producer of this year’s champion pumpkin, and says nobody ever steals one of their vegetables out of the garden in Amana.
Amy’s husband, Steve Krug, grew a pumpkin this year that weighed 969 pounds. He bought his first seeds from a catalog, but that was years ago.
She says at contests all the growers get together and swap seeds. Krug says it takes a chainsaw to cut the record-breaking pumpkins but there’s no shortage of admirers, even if they’re not jack-o-lanterns.
In Amana there are plenty of tourists, and plenty come to see the pumpkins. For husband Steve, there’s no profit in growing the gigantic vegetables, and it’s certainly not his fulltime job.
It’s just a hobby, though this year his winner earned him $2,500, which about pays for the fertilizer. Not only did the champion “punkin” weigh nearly a thousand pounds, Krug says its seeds are about the size of a silver dollar, and are prized by other growers of giant pumpkins. Growers of normal-size pumpkins say they got a bumper crop this year, despite weather that caused problems for some other farmers.