Growing Award-Winning Giant Pumpkins feat. Wisconsin Pumpkin Champ, Cole Sippel

Introduction

Adam: This one will be fun. I don't
know too much about pumpkins or farming — you know a lot about both.

Third Largest Pumpkin in the World

Adam: Is it true that right now you
have the third largest pumpkin in the world?

Cole: No, it is not. At one point it
was.

Adam: What?

Cole: In the last three weeks that
changed. It changed a lot.

Adam: Geez, really? So where's the
database that tells you where your rank is, pumpkin-wise?

Cole: When you go to a weigh-off, you
enter it into this worldwide database. I can see throughout the world who's all
growing them — all over the world, different countries like Italy and Spain, I
can see who's growing them. As there are more weigh-offs, there were more that
we're getting in weights.

Adam: So it's like a hot dog contest
where it's the same three people in the finals every year? Do you see some
churn at the top?

Cole: I have no idea. This is the
first year I've really even known it existed, because this was the first year
that I've been close to the top.

Adam: Oh man, that's cool.

How Cole Got Into Pumpkin Growing

Adam: How'd you get into it? You grew
up on a farm — was that part of it?

Cole: It was actually mostly my
brother that got me into it. Obviously, being and growing up on a farm, we just
had all the resources — very handy in space and water. Space is a big thing. It
takes a huge space to grow one of these giant pumpkins — it's about a 30-foot
by 30-foot area just for one pumpkin.

Adam: Is that from a nutrient
standpoint — like, the plant needs that much soil?

Cole: Mostly just the plant size. It
gets so big — the plant needs to be so big to harness all the energy to grow a
pumpkin of that size.

Adam: So aside from the pumpkin
itself, what does a pumpkin patch look like for a pumpkin that large?

Cole: It's a lot of leaves, a lot of
big leaves. They're like elephant ears — we call them.

Genetics & Seeds

Adam: Do you guys use the same
genetics, same seeds every year?

Cole: We're trying to advance it every
year. What you want is to take pumpkins — you can take an estimation of how big
the pumpkin is by measuring around it and across the top of it, and it will
give you an estimate on how much the pumpkin weighs. You want pumpkins that
weigh more than what it estimates at, because then that means the walls are
really thick. Those are genetics that you're looking for to keep carrying on
and move forward with.

Adam: So who got the first one — or
how many years of this type of pumpkin growing did it take to get to the
current state? Like, did your brother start when he was five, or was it a
family thing before that?

Cole: He probably started six or seven
years ago. I've been growing for four years now. I believe his first pumpkin —

Adam: And you're only four years in?

Cole: Yeah.

Adam: That's pretty cool.

Cole: It's actually probably one of
the younger ones. A lot of the guys that are growing have been growing for over
20 years. We're definitely the younger guys in the general group.

Adam: So did you have to buy some
seeds in the black market to get a jumpstart?

Cole: No. One of the groups we're a
part of is the Wisconsin Giant Pumpkin Growers. It's like a $30 membership fee,
and just by signing up and becoming a member of that group, you actually get
seeds from other growers. Everyone donates them in, and then they just
distribute them out. That's a really easy way that we just started — to get
some seeds to get started.

Adam: Nice.

Success at Wisconsin Lighting Lab

Adam: I know there's — we've got a
bunch of farmers and ex-farmers here at Wisconsin Lighting Lab, so I know a few
folks have attempted to grow their own giant pumpkins. I don't think there's
been any success stories other than yours.

Cole: There has not been many success
stories here. I think we had one person come away with about a hundred-pound
pumpkin.

Adam: And what was yours this year?

Cole: 1,977.

Pumpkin Spec Sheet

Adam: Okay, so maybe we should go
through the spec sheet, the pumpkin spec sheet. What's the circumference?

Cole: Oh, the circumference of this
one was right around 19 feet.

Adam: 19 feet, over a thousand pounds
— just under 2,000.

Cole: Just under 2,000.

Adam: Is it difficult to transport?
You said the wall thickness, or the sturdiness of the pumpkin, is important.
Have you ever had them fall apart?

Cole: No. If anything will happen to
it, it'll crack open — split open — just because it's growing so fast that it
literally splits itself open. That's one of the biggest things we'll have as
far as something going wrong with the pumpkin.

Adam: So no other success stories here
at Wisconsin Lighting Lab. Why do you think that is? I feel like Kevin should
have been one of the success stories.

Cole: He was close. He could have just
put a little more time in there.

Adam: So it's time?

Cole: Assuming it is, it's time. And
just kind of constant attention, a lot of pruning, and a lot of water.

The Pumpkin's Tour

Adam: So what do you do with it when
you're done?

Cole: I've kind of just been taking it
on tour, mostly. I had it at Lee's Games, and the past couple weeks I had it
out at my brother's. He has a little flower and pumpkin business — Erie Point
Farms. They grow pumpkins and sell pumpkins, so it was a fitting place to put
it out in their little shop area that they have, to show off. All the customers
that they had come through were checking it out and taking pictures with it.

Background & Brother Competition

Adam: Were you interested in biology
or science in high school or college?

Cole: No. So it's a lot of — it's just
based on everything you learned on the farm pretty much. And just kind of
between me and my brother, seeing how big we can get one. There's a healthy
competition there.

Adam: Kind of, yeah.

Cole: He's been a pretty big lead in
that competition for most of it.

Adam: He had a head start though.

Cole: Yeah. Well, this is actually the
first year that he hasn't had a pumpkin. He started with two, and between he
had some plant disease issues and he had one split open on him, so he didn't
have any pumpkins this year. This was the first year that I, I guess, beat him
— because he had nothing. But this would have been the second biggest one
between the two of us that we had.

Adam: So have you had any issues in
the past, or had to throw in the towel in a given year?

Cole: Yep. I've had them split open on
me, or they can rot out just for being too wet, as I was learning how to take
care of them better.

Wisconsin & Getting Started

Adam: Nice. So this isn't a
Wisconsin-specific thing, but I guess given all the farming in Wisconsin, this
probably lends itself to being more popular. If somebody wanted to do this, how
do you get started? Do you give your seeds away?

Cole: Yep. We can get seeds for pretty
much anyone. Again, joining this membership automatically gets you seeds. But
you can start with seeds, and as long as you have enough yard space to grow,
you can definitely give it a try. It's more or less what I did this last year.
I bought a new house this past year, and there was no — I didn't have my dad's
farm field behind me to grow a pumpkin in. So I just kind of picked a spot in
my yard and I'm like, alright, this is where I'm going to grow my pumpkin.

Adam: So it wasn't the soil from the
family farm? This was —?

Cole: This was not, no. This was —

Adam: That's pretty cool. So you've
now had success in multiple locations.

Cole: This was by far my biggest
pumpkin, by about 900 pounds.

Adam: So this is the soil that you
used previously — had it been farmed multiple times?

Cole: Yep.

Adam: Do you think had anything to do
with the soil in your current place, where it wasn't farmed as much over the
years?

Cole: There definitely is some — even
just kind of talking to some of the other growers, they thought just having the
virgin soil was probably a huge benefit for me growing right there.

Adam: What's the plan for next year?

Cole: Actually, as soon as I picked
the pumpkin — it was within the same weekend — I planted in a cover crop. It's
like some rye and some clover, just to kind of keep the ground full of
nutrients and replenish itself a little bit before I plant again next spring.

Adam: Is it organic?

Cole: No. Super not.

Adam: So there's some spray involved?

Critters

Adam: Do you keep animals — is there a
fence — like, do deer like pumpkins?

Cole: They do. I'm not really close
enough for that being an issue with this. I've had raccoons kind of crawl
around it before.

Adam: Otherwise I feel like they could
make a home out of it — it could be a pretty nice house.

Cole: Well, usually — I guess some
mice try to crawl into the pumpkin. Usually that's one thing that we have to
keep an eye on — they'll try to crawl under it and make themselves a little
home.

How Fast They Grow

Adam: I saw this thing on Instagram
recently that reminded me of a conversation we had at the Ledge Games, where
somebody did a continuous loop of a camera over several months, and you could
see the plant growing — it was super fast. But you were saying you can actually
hear the pumpkin growing, or see the pumpkin — you can measure it?

Cole: You can measure it in the
morning. When we do our tape measure around it, you can measure in the morning,
go out and measure at night, and you'll see a huge visible difference in your
numbers — because it can grow around 40 pounds a day.

Adam: Have you done a time-lapse
video?

Cole: I haven't, but me and my brother
have been talking about it.

Adam: Oh, that'd be really cool.

Cole: Yeah, we really should.

Adam: How many pounds per day? About
40?

Cole: About 40.

Adam: That's wild. It's crazy to think
about an object being able to grow that much. And how much water is it taking
in — is it mostly water?

Cole: Yep. A lot of water. I'll water
it twice a day. I have it on a watering system timer. I'll water twice a day
for an hour. I have a sprinkler system set up in it.

Lessons Learned

Adam: Interesting. So what's been the
most interesting thing you've learned? You knew some stuff growing up on the
farm, but what rabbit holes have you gone down other than the obvious ones that
you might find with a giant pumpkin?

Cole: I would say probably just plant
disease and bugs, and how much it can affect a plant. That's one of the larger
items that can take out a pumpkin. The cucumber beetles are one of the bigger
ones.

Adam: The red beetles?

Cole: Nope. They're little green ones.

Adam: Green ones, okay.

Cole: They'll eat on the plant and
then they'll actually give it a disease, and then you're out of luck.

Adam: Well, that's no good.

Cedarburg Wine & Harvest Festival

Adam: There's an event in Cedarburg —
I know you went to. What's that all about?

Cole: It's at the Cedarburg Wine and
Harvest Festival. That's a huge festival on its own — the whole street in
Cedarburg — and the pumpkin weigh-off there is actually just like one little
section of this whole road event going on. These past two years, me and my
brother have been the co-coordinators of running this weigh-off, so we're
getting more involved in the whole group.

Adam: Cedarburg's a great town.

Cole: It is, really.

Adam: That's cool. It's a fun event to
go to. I live in the Milwaukee area, so when we go to a pumpkin patch, it's
usually in the Cedarburg area. There are a lot of pumpkins there.

Cole: There are a lot around there.

Wrap-Up & The Record

Adam: Anything else you want to touch
on? Is there a website — if somebody wants to see a picture of the pumpkin
(Becca can put it in the video), but if they want to see it right away, where
would they go?

Cole: Wisconsin Giant Pumpkin Growers
is the website for the whole group that we're part of.

Adam: That's the URL?
WisconsinGiantPumpkin.com? Very functional.

Cole: Yes. Straight to the point.

Adam: That's awesome.

Cole: I would say I probably got lucky
this year, getting just under 2,000 pounds. I've never been close to this
before.

Adam: So what's the official record in
the world?

Cole: It actually just got broken this
year. It's over 2,700 pounds. That was in Italy — someone had one, which is
insane.

Adam: So you were third in the world
at one point. Are you still top 50?

Cole: Yep, top 50. I don't know for
sure, but the last time I checked I was 30th. I'll finish second in Wisconsin,
because we're all finished.

Adam: I'm pretty happy for a few years
in. That's pretty solid. Alright man, well, thank you very much.

Cole: For sure. Good talk.