Long Island giant pumpkin growers want to increase their numbers

When Scott Armstrong entered his 1,339-pound pumpkin in the Hicks Nurseries weigh-off this month, he was confident he would win the top prize — but he had mixed feelings about it.

The Commack resident — who did win — said he was disheartened by the declining field of competition in recent years. Just four growers submitted their pumpkins to the Westbury nursery’s contest this year, down from about a dozen when Armstrong started competing in the late 1990s.

“I’ve had so much fun doing this, and I want someone to keep doing it when I’m not doing it any longer,” he said.

When Armstrong, 52, started entering his pumpkins in contests, he was the young guy among much older growers. And as they aged, no one took their place, he said.

But there is reason for hope: A new guard of mostly younger competitive pumpkin growers is slowly taking shape on Long Island. Their motivations vary — for one, it was a love of Halloween that originally piqued his interest, while for another, it was the chance to bond with his father.

For Krista Oliver, of Huntington, whose 298-pound pumpkin won third prize at the Hicks contest, it was her kids who inspired her to enter for the first time this year.

“My son wanted to do it,” said Oliver, 37. “I’m just a crazy mom; it’s what we do for our children.”

Oliver, who sells real estate, was the only woman to compete in the contest. She said she educated herself about pumpkin growing by researching online with her son, Jett, 8, and her daughter, Sloane, 4. Her family now has their sights set on growing a 1,000-pound pumpkin.

“My kids are in it to win it,” she said. “They want a big one!”

THE OLD GUARD

Armstrong said he was introduced to pumpkin growing in the 1980s when, as a child, he spent time at his family’s vacation home in upstate Tannersville. A retired farmer who lived nearby taught him the basics and, Armstrong recalled, “I tried to grow them in my backyard and got a big plant with lots of flowers, but didn’t get one pumpkin.”

He said he abandoned the hobby until the mid-’90s, when he read and clipped out a Newsday article about growing giant pumpkins. His first attempt yielded a “softball-sized” pumpkin, he recalled.

The next year, Armstrong said he grew two pumpkins — one that weighed in the mid-600 pounds, which rotted, and another that weighed 301 pounds, which he entered into his first contest at The Bayberry nursery in Amagansett. He remembers feeling unwelcome among the other growers there.

“I was 27 years old and the other guys were older,” he said. They told him it would be impossible to grow a 700-pound pumpkin on Long Island, but he thought otherwise. “That just motivated me more.”

When he returned in 1999, Armstrong said he won first place with a 684-pound pumpkin. Two years later, his 814-pound pumpkin broke the Long Island record. (Data on champion growers and their pumpkins is curated and maintained by members of the growing community, through online forums and via websites such as bigpumpkins.com.)

In 2003, Armstrong grew a 1,030-pound pumpkin, his first to exceed 1,000 pounds. “I blew my own record away,” he said.

After that win, he said he wanted to move the contest to a venue where it would get more exposure. He approached Hicks Nurseries, and they agreed to host the contest.

Armstrong, a banking professional who is married and has two teenage daughters, said he has participated in the event every year since, except for the two years during the pandemic when it was canceled.

His largest entry weighed 1,623 pounds, setting yet another Long Island record, in 2018. By comparison, a 2,749-pound pumpkin grown in 2023 by Travis Gienger of Minnesota holds the Guinness World Record.

But it’s not all about winning, said Armstrong, noting that he doesn’t want others to be intimidated by the prospect of competing with behemoth pumpkins. “It’s about having a good time doing the best you can under the conditions you’ve been given,” he said. “If you grow it, you should show it.”

And he practices what he preaches: Once, said Armstrong, he entered a 200-pound pumpkin he knew had no chance of winning. “I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed. It was the best I could do that year,” he said.

WHAT IT TAKES

Growing a giant pumpkin, after all, is not easy, Armstrong said.

It requires the right seeds (he grows the Atlantic Giant variety), plenty of water and strategies such as his practice of wiping the fruit with a diluted bleach solution to prevent diseases and rot, he said.

“Sometimes, a pumpkin will rot on the plant or split open, or animals get into it,” he said. Other times, disaster can be self-inflicted, like the time he burned a plant with a too-high concentration of fungicide, or when he cracked a pumpkin while attempting to reposition it. He has learned to plant two vines as insurance.

The amount of time and money spent varies from grower to grower, with some dropping as much as $1,000 into one pumpkin.

Armstrong is an enthusiastic cheerleader for newcomers and is generous with advice and seeds for anyone who asks. “I never want to make anyone feel like I felt all those years,” he said, recalling his experience with the older growers.

One of the growers he has supported is Michael Keegan, of Deer Park, whose 854-pound Atlantic Giant pumpkin took second place at the Hicks contest.

Keegan, 26, is a student in the Nassau BOCES plumbing technician program. He describes himself as a “smaller” grower than Armstrong.

“I want to grow nice, round pumpkins, not blobs like Scott’s,” he said with a laugh, explaining that the biggest pumpkins are usually not as evenly shaped as smaller ones.

After the pair met in 2019 through a Facebook group for pumpkin growers, Armstrong encouraged Keegan to enter the Hicks competition — and he won second place. “That was the closest I’d ever come to winning,” said Keegan, who had previously participated in two contests in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Keegan credits his interest in pumpkins to his love of Halloween. He said that as a child, his father, who grew vegetables every summer, planted a small pumpkin patch for him “because I was so obsessed with them.” But as he grew older, friends and video games took precedence.

That changed in 2018 when Keegan said he saw a YouTube video about growing giant pumpkins.

“I thought, ‘That can’t be real,’ ” he recalled. But he nonetheless bought seeds through the YouTube channel and that year grew pumpkins weighing 240 and 327 pounds, he said.

This past summer, Armstrong and Keegan commiserated about the diminishing number of competitive pumpkin growers on Long Island. “We had a couple of talks about trying to get more people involved, and I thought Facebook would be a good way to do that,” Keegan said.

So in September, he created the Long Island Giant Pumpkin Growers Club on Facebook and posted an offer of free seeds on a few other local groups. Dozens of people took him up on the offer, and 85 members joined the group in its first month.

Keegan said he has saved “hundreds, if not thousands, of seeds” from his pumpkins and has already mailed out 40 envelopes to people who have expressed interest in growing with them.

“If I can get one or two people who are serious about it, then it will be more fun at the competitions . . . I’m just trying to build a community at this point,” he said.

FATHER-SON HOBBY

Another up-and-coming young grower is Frank Rasizzi, 21, of Northport.

Rasizzi said he got his start at 14, when he joined his school’s garden club.

“We grew pumpkins in one of the courtyards” at Northport Middle School, he recalled. “From there, I went out and got my own seeds, cut out a piece of land behind my dad’s office in East Northport and planted my own the summer going into freshman year of high school.”

After growing pumpkins in an L-shaped garden bed that first year, Rasizzi said he installed two greenhouses, each approximately 16- by 50-feet with 3-foot panels that he can remove for cross-ventilation. “That allows us to beat out a lot of nature’s problems, like high winds in early May,” he said.

Rasizzi, who grows various family lines of the Atlantic Giant variety, said he continues to educate himself about growing methods and traces the genealogy of his seeds online.

“This hobby was a crazy, impulsive idea that requires a lot of time, but you get out of it what you put into it,” he said.

One major benefit, he said, has been the chance to spend time with his father, also named Frank.

“My dad and I were never big sports people, but we were into fishing when I was younger,” he said. In recent years, they have pivoted to growing pumpkins due to the elder Rasizzi’s health issues.

The younger Rasizzi, a Binghamton University senior studying business administration and history, said he and his father have entered their pumpkins in the Hicks contest in 2017, 2018 and 2023. They won third place all three times, with the largest weighing 464 pounds in 2017.

The pair didn’t grow a pumpkin this year because of his father’s health issues, Rasizzi said. But, he added, they hope to be “back in full swing again” next year after he graduates and moves back to Long Island.

PUMPKIN PARTIES

Rasizzi said that for him, pumpkin growing is more about family and community than winning.

In addition to the time he and his dad spend together in the greenhouse, Rasizzi said he enjoys annual “pumpkin parties that give friends and family an excuse to come over.”

He added, “Everyone has a good time and takes pictures with the pumpkins” displayed on hay bales in the front yard. “It’s fun to see people put their car into reverse to see them.”

Armstrong hopes more young growers like Rasizzi, Keegan and Oliver will soon take up the hobby.

“Maybe somebody will see this article . . . and cut it out, and maybe it will inspire them like I was inspired,” he said.