Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever.

From Booklist: It's not only Charles Schulz's Linus who waits every year for a Great Pumpkin to come along. All over the country, from Rhode Island to California, Ohio to Washington, legions of men (and not a few women) eagerly anticipate great pumpkins of their own—literally. Audacious, obsessive gardeners, they have dreamed and planned, watered and weeded, pruned and fertilized, coddled and agonized over a bumper crop of pumpkins, hoping to nurture one worthy of "world's largest" honors. To do that, it will have to weigh in at close to 1,500 pounds and approximate a Volkswagen Beetle in girth. Accompanying father-and-son pumpkin growers and competitors Dick and Ron Wallace throughout a roller-coaster season, Warren experiences it all, from foaming slime to marauding mice. As bank accounts dwindle and ulcers blossom, Warren's hilarious yet enlightening exposé reveals why and how these passionate, peculiar, and painstaking pumpkin growers are willing to put it all on the line for one big—one very big—payoff. Haggas, Carol

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