Turua School and the giant pumpkins

Garden to Table tamariki on the Hauraki Plains got their whole community involved in growing and celebrating really big pumpkins, with the seed of an idea now growing into an annual event!

Tamariki from the Garden to Table programme at Turua School with their pumpkin plants. Photo: Anikha Sanders.

This October, tamariki in the Garden to Table programme are Turua School will be busy nurturing pumpkin seedlings, in a greenhouse partly funded by their amazing work growing and selling the plants last year. Pumpkins have become synonymous with October around the world because it’s harvest season in the northern hemisphere. But here in Aotearoa, October is Spring, and the perfect time to plant!

But that’s just the beginning for Turua. At the school’s calf club day in late October, the kids will sell up to 100 seedlings to members of their local community, with the sale price acting as an entry fee to the school’s pumpkin growing competition. Then, for the next five months in back yards across Hauraki, gardeners will try to grow their little pumpkin plants to record-breaking size.

The event follows Turua School’s first giant pumpkin growing contest this March. On weigh-in day, more than 400 people came to see the judging of 38 pumpkins that had been grown from the kids’ seedlings, including entries from local early childhood centres. The winner clocked in at an impressive 49.8kg!

“We were super pleased to have school families growing pumpkins who usually never grew vegetables or gardened,” says Anikha Sanders, who’s the garden specialist for the school’s Garden to Table programme. She added that other contests on the day allowed everyone to join in, including decorated scarecrow and gumboot competitions, and raffles with donated prizes.

“Our Garden to Table group sold winter veggie seedlings they had grown from seed and we provided pumpkin soup and cheese rolls produced in the kitchen,” Anikha says.

What happened to all those pumpkins afterwards? Those left at Turua after the weigh-in fed the school’s worm farm for the next three months!

With their awesome efforts, the tamariki raised $3,000 to go towards a school greenhouse — but seeing the community come together and forge new connections was even more rewarding, Anikha says.

“I reckon there's going to be some serious competitiveness this time, now that we've got a taste for it!” she says.

There’s certainly room to grow — the Atlantic giant pumpkins the tamariki will sell this year can be nurtured to hundreds of kilos in size!

For more information about Turua School’s calf club day, when pumpkin seedlings will be on sale, keep an eye on their Facebook page. Your school can find out more about joining the Garden to Table programme here on our site.

And for tips on growing giant pumpkins, here’s Anikha’s guide, which she’s written for entrants to this year’s competition.