Here’s a goal for all of you who believe bigger is better. How about beating Maine’s new record for heaviest pumpkin? It won’t be easy with the standard now set at 1,114 pounds.

I took my 13-year-old and traveled to the Cumberland Fair the other day to see this behemoth for myself.

Although the anticipation of viewing humongous pumpkins wasn’t foremost in his mind, even my son John was impressed by their size – at least for a moment, before the call of the midway pulled him and his money to its clutches.

Windsor resident Tom Lishness grew the winning entry. But, the second prize winner, a 1,093 pounder grown by John Powers of Harpswell, looked even larger size-wise.

How do people grow pumpkins of such preponderance?

First, you must start with the right seed. Don’t expect results like these giants with the seeds you scoop out of your Halloween pumpkins. Dill’s Atlantic Giants are a good choice but there are other varieties as well.

The Maine Pumpkin Growers Organization, www.mainepumpkins.com, has a link to order seeds. It also gives detailed growing instructions and is my source for much of the information in this week’s column.

You might think fall is a strange time to be talking about starting seeds but if you want to grow giant pumpkins you should be preparing now.

Although you will want to shade the fruit itself, the pumpkin patch must be in full sun. And you must we willing to dedicate at least 400 square feet of growing space for these babies – 600 feet is better.

It is important to get a soil test so you know what amendments to add. The ideal pH for pumpkins is 7.0. Fall is the optimum time to enrich your patch with rotted manure, shredded leaves, compost and lime or sulfur if needed. Run over leaves several times with a lawnmower to shred them.

Next spring, till the soil when it’s workable. Some growers cover the patch with clear plastic in early spring to help the ground warm up more quickly.

Once you’ve prepared the soil, build a temporary structure about three feet square to protect your young seedling from the cold. Some use lights or heaters with the mini greenhouse to keep it warmer at night.

Seeds should be started indoors about the last week of April. I won’t cover the details in this column since my intent is to give you an overview of the effort required to raise them, but even proper seed starting is a multi-step procedure.

Once your seedlings are in the ground, cover the structure you built to protect them with blankets during those still-chilly May nights and uncover in the morning.

It is recommended that you spray once a week with a fungicide and on alternate weeks with a pesticide. I do not generally recommend chemicals. If you must spray, try to use organic products. Even so, be careful – they can still be dangerous.

In two to three weeks you’ll have a vine and at five weeks, the vine will be growing at a rate of one foot per day. As it grows, this main vine will produce secondary vines that should be kept on the plant and trained outwards. The secondary vines will produce suckers that must be removed.

When vines reach the edges of your patch, pinch off the tips and bury the exposed ends. Two tap roots will grow from each place a leaf stock meets the vine. If you dig a trench ahead of the encroaching vine, it will encourage better growth of these tap roots.

These pumpkins need a regular routine of fertilizers but not always the same ones. For the first three weeks, they need phosphorus. For the next three, nitrogen. From week six to time of pollination, they again need phosphorus. For the next three, no fertilizers at all. And from then on, about July 20, to harvest, they require potassium.

Pumpkins of this size need an unbelievable amount of water – over 600 gallons a week. Water should be applied at a constant rate to keep the soil moist but not wet.

You must also hand-pollinate if you want to guarantee pumpkins true to the genetic line. Although not complicated, it is a bit time consuming.

As your pumpkins grow, you must cradle them in comfort. Many growers use a four-inch bed of sand underneath the growing fruits to allow water to drain and to prevent pests entering from below.

Temperatures above 85 degrees cause stress, so you must mist the vines’ leaves. As pumpkins can grow as much as 40 pounds per day, causing tension on the stem, you should cut the taproots closest to the fruit to help relieve this stress.

As fall weather becomes cool you must tuck your giant babies in at night by covering with a blanket. Or two. Or three. And when frost is predicted, you either need to cover the vine as well as the pumpkins or water throughout the night with a sprinkler.

Well, I’ve grown this column nearly as large as some of these mega-pumpkins but I hope it’s given you an idea of the work that’s required.

If you want to try for Maine’s record, or the world record of 1,446 pounds, you’ll want to check out that Web site and order the book, “How to Grow World Class Pumpkins II” by Don Langevin. And now is the time to prime that patch for spring growing.