There's something growing inside our October issue, and it's not a redwood. It's a pumpkin. And you won't believe how much it weighs now.

To illustrate "Pumped Up," our article on the world's largest pumpkins, we first juxtaposed a seed specially bred to grow giant pumpkins with the garden variety (above left). Photo editor Susan Welchman and I liked the shot, but we thought it would be cooler if the giant seed were sprouting. So we entrusted the seed to Elena Sheveiko, our resident green thumb.

The pumpkin seed—which came from the farm of the late Howard "The Pumpkin King" Dill—proved more difficult. It needed to be watered every four hours. Elena kept it in a plastic tub at her desk, swaddled in moist paper towels. She says she carried it around, slept by it, even prayed over it. On the weekend, she took it with her when she visited Longwood Gardens, a 1,000-acre botanical garden west of Philadelphia. "I had to," she says. "I treat plants like the way I would treat a kitten or a baby."

A friend of hers once left very expensive orchids in the car on a hot day. They baked. When Elena asked what happened, the friend said she just forgot. "I thought, how could you forget about plants?" she recalls. Elena took the wilted orchids home and cared for them. "One died, but the other I was able to grow back from a tiny piece of tissue." She was not so lucky with the pumpkin seed. Within a few days, it died. Elena was heartbroken. "I never fail," she said.

Our deadline was fast approaching. Susan decided to skip the gardening and asked a competitive grower in Massachusetts to send us seeds that had already sprouted. "Wrap it up in wet paper and bubble wrap and ship for overnight delivery," she wrote. A few days later, the super seeds arrived, each with a pale tap root peeking out like the fleshy foot of a clam. We photographed them and put them on a page (layout below), but the sprout looked limp and stumpy. We wanted a long fuse-like root leading to a green bomb, ready to burst. Elena asked for another chance. We ordered more seeds.

For the next two weeks, Elena planted a new one every other day. That way, when it came time to shoot them, we'd have seeds at several stages of development. One morning in early June, she came running into my office. "Come look!" she said, her face beaming like a proud first-time mother. In her pot, a crop of leafy vines were creeping from the soil (below).

After we got the shot (top of this post, right), Susan gave one of the seeds to her friend Henry Barrow, who owns a farm in Maryland. Henry dug a hole, planted the seed, and then he says, "it took off like crazy." By mid-October, the pumpkin had ballooned to 105 pounds. Henry picked it on Halloween to display on his front porch (below). I asked him if he carved a jack o' lantern. "No," said Henry. "It was too heavy for me to take to the [carving] party."

—Oliver Uberti

Photos: Rebecca Hale (seeds); Mark Thiessen (cover); Oliver Uberti (pot); Susan Welchman (pumpkin)

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