Mitre 10 MEGA Te Awamutu Garden Centre manager Lachlan Chambers (from left) with Asher (2) and Ellie Donnelly (6) won the Carved Pumpkin section of the Giant Pumpkin Challenge with their cookie monster pumpkin. Photo / Makayla McNeil
Mitre 10 MEGA Te Awamutu Garden Centre manager Lachlan Chambers (from left) with Asher (2) and Ellie Donnelly (6) won the Carved Pumpkin section of the Giant Pumpkin Challenge with their cookie monster pumpkin. Photo / Makayla McNeil
The Barnyard Early Childhood Education Centre in Te Awamutu just crowned the winners of its recent Giant Pumpkin Challenge.
The kindergarten started this annual competition four years ago and teacher/organiser Debbie Tucker said the event - and the pumpkins - would get bigger and better each year.
This year’s heaviest pumpkin was a whopping 64kg - apparently, the secret is in how much water you give them.
The awards ceremony was held on Saturday morning at The Barnyard with a barbecue and plenty of parental support.
“We had the seeds. The children planted the seeds and named them. Once they’re about 10cm, we get parents to put their name down if they want to take one home to grow.
“It’s just grown every year. We have parents who are quite competitive and are very secret squirrel about the size of their pumpkins.”
Forty-five seeds were handed out in October with about 30 pumpkins appearing for Saturday’s ceremony.
Some of the children involved have since started primary school, but The Barnyard invited them back to showcase their giant orange vegetables.
There were prizes across five categories - plus teachers - for the heaviest giant pumpkin, the most orange, the one with the most character, the best decorated and the best carved.
Hendrix (2) and Havana Jones (3) won the Heaviest Pumpkin with a whopping 64kg pumpkin. Photo / Makayla McNeil
“Even if you don’t grow one, you can buy a supermarket one and carve or decorate it. This year we included the teachers, they got their own category,” Tucker said.
“The biggest teacher’s pumpkin was 55kg. I got pipped in the teacher category by 5kg and I’ve already got my plan in place for next year.
“We had one little girl who decorated her pumpkin and it was all about the Barnyard. It had all the teachers. She’d written all their names on it. It’s really lovely for us as teachers to get that back as well.”
This great community event has had support from Mitre 10 Mega Te Awamutu since the beginning.
Garden centre manager Lachlan Chambers has been a judge and provided many prizes for the children and teachers.
“We’ve developed quite an awesome relationship with Lachlan,” Tucker said.
“He comes down and judges our pumpkins for us. He also supplies gardening-related prizes for the categories. That’s been awesome. He loves it and he’s so good.”
The array of pumpkins that were entered. Photo / Makayla McNeil
The Barnyard owner Michelle Smith and her team were proud that their event was sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Once the ceremony was over, the pumpkins were loaded onto a trailer to be fed to Tucker’s cows.
“The seeds that we used this year came out of the heaviest pumpkin from last year. We put a big tarp down and the children got to smash the pumpkin,” she said.
“The seeds get dried off for next year, I take all the pumpkin bits and all the mush goes into our worm farm.”
The Barnyard Early Childhood Education Centre crew would like to extend a special thank you to Chambers and Mitre 10 Mega. They look forward to his involvement again next year.
Categories winners:
Heaviest Pumpkin - Havana and Hendrix Jones 64kg.
Most Orange Pumpkin - Maddie Chatfield.
Pumpkin with the Most Character - Grayson Crake.
Best Decorated Pumpkin - Harper-Rose Gifford.
Best Carved Pumpkin - Asher and Ellie Donnelly.
Heaviest Teacher Pumpkin - Nicole Jones 55kg.
Jesse Wood is a multimedia journalist based in Te Awamutu. He joined the Te Awamutu Courier and NZME in 2020.
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