James and the Giant Peach vibes.
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Once upon a time I was the pumpkin product manager working with a breeder just before he retired.
He had a long very successfully career. One day he asked me what I thought of the giant pumpkin market. I told him to have fun and if he made a decent one, I would find a market for it.
Thus began the years of several acres of giant pumpkin we evaluated together.
Sadly we never got one that I thought was worth introducing, but we grew some 900lb ones and entered them into the local giant pumpkin competition. The damn things crack and sunburn way too easily.
I still think he had some revolutionary ideas that could have made a nice tidy sum if he could have gotten them reliably holding together.
Yours is one of the more unusual job titles I've ever heard! Have you ever been involved with other interesting products?
By the way I think your instinct was right, giant pumpkins would be a hit with hardcore Halloween decorators
Well... There was a few... Below are a selection of the ones I named.
https://www.harrisseeds.com/products/11613-pumpkin-warty-goblin-f1?variant=52367787917675
https://www.seedway.com/product/mischief-pumpkin-farmore/
https://us.stokeseeds.com/hybridpumpkin-cronus-0780209t.html
https://www.harrisseeds.com/products/11724-pumpkin-rhea-f1
https://us.stokeseeds.com/hybridpumpkin-littlegiant-0780226t.html
https://gtiwholesale.com/products/watermelon-wayfarer
Those are my stunningly beautiful hands.
https://www.sekluva.lt/en/product/watermelon-livia-f1/
https://www.seedway.com/product/troubadour-watermelon-primed/
They photoshopped the hell out that picture... Those fuckers. I have the original somewhere on my files.
These cantaloupes/melons I worked on as a plant breeder but other people picked out the shitty names.
https://www.melissas.com/products/origami-melons
https://www.francesconmelons.com/en/products/1026/smooth-melon
There's a bunch more but I'd have to pull up my old files to remember them all.
This was all before moved into row crops, native grasses etc... The best job title is the one I have now...."Owner".
Wow that's actually awesome thanks for going to the effort to show us that! I particularly like the Warty Goblin and the Mini Love! Perhaps one day those varietals will be as common and recognised as a Granny Smith and your legacy will live on forever!
How much creative input do you have in the breeding process or is it more on the naming/marketing side? Are there any other dream projects like giant pumpkins that you always wanted to try?
As a breeder, I had limited creative control. I could mess around with around 10% of the effort. Everything else was meeting market specs (boring as fuck actually). Origami and Bacir is from that 10% messing around over some drinks in cooperation with some other breeders. Origami is a cross between a cantaloupe out of Mexico and Italian type. Bacir is a cross between a honeydew and a charentais (the only one that didn't pop open on the bottom.)
Pumpkins - Nobody knew what the fuck they were doing. The breeder was a classic absent minded professor who was trying everything for fun. He got a ton of cool new genetics from a farmer in Michigan. So I got to play little kid in the pumpkin patch. I had around a 95% success rate on picking the winners at first glance. 100% creative freedom, it's was a hell of a lot of fun for about 3 weeks of the year...
Watermelons was a slog- the breeder couldn't give me much to work with due to severe historical underfunding. I was mainly trying to get he the funding she needed and build the program up where it should have been.
If you notice there are no cucumbers. I ran into big issues with a breeder who screwed the pooch big time. He fucked up so badly he got an early retirement and I basically had to restart the entire program with a newly mint PhD with zero experience. Took me a few years to retrain that shiney new PhD from all the stupid shit his doctorate taught him. It takes around 10 years to make a new variety and I had moved on by then.
Really interesting stuff! The mind boggles at the possibilities of interesting fruit. You should consider doing an AMA Its such a niche area I'm sure other people would be interested too!
For a more niche, but possibly more lucrative option once the cracking problems were fixed, figure out how to preserve them properly, mount one on a carriage frame and rent it out to people crazy about Disney for Cinderella themed parties. I have seen the intensity of the Disney obsessed, they would drop $$$$$$ for something like that.
If Tim Burton is short of ideas for another film, this could be his The Straight Story. (He won’t need to resort to any tricks to get in the shot of some spooky pumpkins that is his trademark.)
I really appreciate the choice of jacket
I mean… you want to be easily spotted if something goes wrong with your pumpkin but safety yellow would just clash.
Dudes will see this and say "hell yeah"
Chicks will see this and say "hell yes!"
Cinderella will see this and say "That's my pumpkin! I don't know you!"
James and the Giant Peach will see this and say "Pfft, amateur."
My first though was Roald Dahl!
That girl ain't right
Raised?
Yes, he himself
The stellar education system is at it again.
Not sure whats weirder, rowing around in a pumpkin or raising a pumpkin.
It's a sad story. It's mother abandoned it, so it was raised by a human and has never known true pumpkin life.
Paul and the giant pumpkin
That movie made me so damn hungry for cantaloupe
He raised that pumpkin just to kill it and play in its skin. And vegans say we're the monsters? Deplorable 😭
First impressions was that this was Tualatin, Oregon. This is a yearly event!
How do they stop them from rolling over?
If youre sitting in it low enough I think it would be fine. As long as the center of gravity is below the waterline.
Put the giant pumpkin in the water.
Cut a hole in the top once it stops spinning.
Hop in.
As long as you keep your butt/ knees/ feet at the lowest point your weight will act as a ballast.
Pumpkins in Oregon are magic.
Your giant brass danglers act as ballast
What happens if they are still in the water after the palace clocktower strikes midnight?
This is after the midnight.
this sparks joy 😊
Damariscotta, Maine has a giant pumpkin fest that includes these type of "boats" for a regatta and races. It's a fun weekend!
He turned his son into a boat!
It's giving James And The Giant Peach.
My latent boomer genes are activating upon hearing that phrase
This makes me wonder if he’s carrying a magical ring somewhere very important
I know there's a pumpkin boat race in the US.. oregon I think. And im pretty sure one in canada as well :3 I stumbled upon content of one of the people who would participate talking about how they grow the pumpkins and pick the best ones for the race. Interesting stuff overall
There's also one in Kasterlee, Belgium
https://parks.tualatinoregon.gov/events/pumpkin-regatta/
Tualatin specifically, which is a small city in the Portland Metro...
There should be a modified class. Wherein a certain percentage of the weight can be physical mods, like a bow for reduced resistance. Oar locks, etc. No power, though.
And, a battle class. Last one floating wins.
pumpkin boat fight!
I have doubts about the "boat" but the rest of the equipment looks well prepared.