Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Princes Town gar­den­er Sha­heed Ali’s 500-pound pump­kin is ger­mi­nat­ing more at­ten­tion than he ex­pect­ed.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein and Namde­v­co of­fi­cials have al­ready reached out since Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed the hu­mungous veg­etable on Fri­day’s CNC3 news­cast and the front page of Sat­ur­day’s T&T Guardian news­pa­per.

Ali said when he plant­ed the seeds he got from a friend in Flori­da two months ago, he nev­er ex­pect­ed it to grow to that size and he cer­tain­ly did not ex­pect all the at­ten­tion it has been gar­ner­ing.

When he har­vest­ed it on Fri­day, they had to tie a har­ness with a rope at­tached to a pick-up van to drag it from the gar­den at the back of his house to his front yard at Craig­nish Vil­lage.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ali said the pump­kin at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of peo­ple pass­ing along the road, peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er gar­den­ers.

“Peo­ple pass­ing on they say­ing, ‘Wow, look at that big pump­kin’. One per­son said they thought it was plas­tic and then they saw it on the news.”

He said every­one who vis­it­ed took a pho­to with the pump­kin. Ali said the Namde­v­co CEO con­tact­ed him on Sat­ur­day and asked whether he would be in­ter­est­ed in putting it on dis­play at the Ma­coya mar­ket yes­ter­day (Sun­day).

“I said yes, but how I reach­ing up there with a 500-pound pump­kin,” he laughed.

Ali said the of­fi­cial said he would dis­cuss it with his peo­ple and get back to him. He said Min­is­ter Ho­sein al­so con­tact­ed his daugh­ter Joy­ann Ali-Ja­hoor and spoke to her about pos­si­bly putting it on dis­play at a mar­ket.

“It will be nice, but they have to help with the arrange­ments to get it up there,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said time is against them as the pump­kin will even­tu­al­ly de­cay.

Ali said he and his son had ob­served a hole in the pump­kin about an inch and a half deep. Based on the ad­vice of a few gar­den­ers who vis­it­ed him, he cleaned the hole and is en­sur­ing it re­mains dry.

He said his cousin from Amer­i­ca al­so con­tact­ed him. “She said her son, who al­so lives in Amer­i­ca, called her on Sat­ur­day night af­ter see­ing the pump­kin sto­ry on so­cial me­dia. She telling me that this has reached world­wide,” he said.

Fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment in 2017 from Petrotrin, Ali took up gar­den­ing as a hob­by, but he was in­ter­est­ed in grow­ing crops of dif­fer­ent colours and sizes unique to T&T. In his gar­den at present is an 85-pound wa­ter­mel­on which he ex­pects to grow to over 100 pounds by Au­gust.