DATE: Wednesday, October 1, 1997            TAG: 9710010029

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY MADDRY

                                            LENGTH:   84 lines

A PRIZE-WINNING BIG UN GREW IN CHESAPEAKE PUMPKIN PATCH

WITH DOGGED footsteps and raindrops sliding in wormlike tracks off his bright blue raincoat, Russell Tye, a 7-year-old from Chesapeake, took me on a tour of his giant pumpkin patch last week.

Yep, Halloween is coming. And nobody around here is more prepared for it than Russell. He can lay a pumpkin on you that weighs 352 pounds.

He grew it in the pumpkin patch his family owns behind Welcome Baptist Church on Kempsville Road.

``I just call it Big Un,'' he said, leading me around a corner of the patch where it was nearly hidden by the rain-dotted leaves surrounding it.

A wooden frame protected the monster fruit from excessive sunlight. Beneath it grew a truly gigantic melon resembling a spaceship from a sci-fi movie.

Because Big Unwas[sic] still attached to the vine, it had not been weighed on a scale until this past Saturday, when the 352-pounder was weighed at the Virginia State Fair. It took third place in the pumpkin competition. (Congratulations, too, to Jimmy White, the Suffolk man who won first place with a pumpkin weighing 498 pounds!)

Russell's gourd was 10 feet in circumference. Big Un was so large it took five adults holding the grips on a tarpaulin to load it onto a truck last weekend when Russell and his parents, Tom and Julia Tye, too it to the state fair in Richmond.

Russell's Big Un was the biggest pumpkin I'd ever seen. His dad, Tom, said it was indeed large. But not in the world-class category.

Tom said a pumpkin weighing 1,061 pounds won a contest by the World Pumpkin Federation in New York not long ago. It won a prize of $100,000, he said.

Russell has picked up a little change himself. He won $150 at the state fair for Big Un. And he had already snagged a $50 prize for the largest pumpkin - 120 pounds - in the Farmers Market Giant Vegetable Contest at the Neptune Festival Country Fair Day a couple of weeks ago. And $25 for the largest squash (weighing 3.7 pounds).

The Tyes' melon patch holds plenty of big pumpkins - many so large they seem to be competing for a chance to be Cinderella's coach. If a pumpkin seems likely to be really big, Russell claims it for his own, his father said.

Russell's dad and mom do a lot of the work, but Russell works right along beside them, picking off the squash bugs and cucumber beetles that destroy the vines, pulling weeds, whatever.

Russell briefed me on pumpkin growing: ``You start with a little dirt mound and put the seed in about one-half inch deep. You put down manure and compost, and then in the fall, you have to plant rye or clover. You plant in the spring.''

The pumpkins need plenty of water, and you have to ``pinch back the vines where big ones are growing to make 'em larger,'' Russell said.

Once the pumpkins become enormous - about 100 pounds or more - Russell begins to name them. Two giants growing on the same vine he has dubbed The Twins.

``When they get really big, they have really unusual shapes and don't look like ordinary pumpkins. I call one of them UFO because it looks real weird,'' he said.

To grow a huge pumpkin requires seeds from other huge pumpkins. Russell's pumpkin that won the Farmers Market contest was grown with a seed from the 1,061 pounder mentioned earlier - the world's largest at the time. Most of the seeds for giant melons planted by the Tyes are All Atlantic Giants.

The Tyes believe their pumpkins might have been twice as large if the summer had not been so dry. The family has installed an irrigation system, but even so, the pumpkins didn't get the drenching they needed to maximize growth.

``Pumpkins are about 80 percent water,'' Tom said. ``They need a lot of water. Then they really grow. Some pumpkins have actually added 25 pounds in a single day and four inches in circumference.''

The giants don't taste as good as normal pumpkins. And they tend to be lighter in color, so they aren't as appealing as jack o' lanterns, although the Tyes use them for that purpose.

Nearly all of the giants are given away. An especially large one goes to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters each year. And Russell always takes several to his school - Baylake Pines Private School - so that his schoolmates can see the monsters from his patch.

Third place isn't bad for the state fair. And, as in baseball, there's always next year.

Russell used the back of his hand to brush away the curls of blonde hair spilling near a pair of blue eyes that held a thoughtful, faraway look.

``Someday I'd like to grow a pumpkin that weighs a thousand pounds,'' he said.

Bet he does, too. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Russell Tye, 7...

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