Weigh-off pays off for great gourd grower.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

PLEASANT HILL - You cannot eat a 1,385-pound pumpkin, but you can smash a Volkswagen flat with one, or cut it in half, slap an outboard motor on it and race it across a lake.

Or, if you are Steve Daletas of Pleasant Hill, you can haul the gargantuan gourd you have spent your summer carefully tending up to an international weigh-off in Canby and discover that you have produced the biggest pumpkin in the world so far this year.

With this comes bragging rights and a few thousand dollars.

Daletas, 43, who works as a commercial pilot for Horizon Air, won the award Saturday from the Pacific Giant Vegetable Growers, which, like similar groups around the country, held the regional weigh-in to find the biggest fruits and veggies.

He lives with his wife and two children on a sweet little 3-acre spread. About 12,000 square feet of his land is devoted to growing competitively huge pumpkins, all overseen by a yellow lab, a cat, a turkey and three sheep - Sophie, Mini and Maxi - who eat Daletas' pumpkin rejects "like candy."

Growing a pumpkin the size of Jabba the Hutt takes devotion, commitment and a competitive streak, all of which Daletas has in spades.

When he's not flying, he's working in his pumpkin patch, especially during the critical months of June and July, when the plants need plenty of tender loving care.

"It's not uncommon to be out at first light till after dark, pruning, pollinating, watering," Daletas said.

By Aug. 1, his winning pumpkin weighed 171 pounds. And then it really took off. There was a period of about 19 days when it was gaining 28 pounds a day, he said.

Daletas chooses the largest, healthiest looking plants in his patch to lavish with attention. They rest on a water-permeable mat that keeps dirt and critters off the bottom, and green tarps shade them from the sun. When the nights turn chilly, Daletas drapes his biggest pumpkins with old quilts.

He grew up in the Friendly Street neighborhood, and his parents always rented a garden plot for him each year at Alton Baker Park. As a kid, he loved sports and gardening. When he moved his family to Pleasant Hill six years ago, he finally had some room to grow.

"This was a nice blend between sports and getting your hands dirty," he said.

You don't grow giant pumpkins to eat, he said. They're much too tough and stringy.

But giant vegetable growers have plenty of other things to do with pumpkins. This year the competition was held at the Hoffman Dairy in Canby, but before the weighing started, organizers brought in a giant crane operator and a Volkswagen - either a Jetta or a Rabbit, Daletas isn't quite sure.

But he is quite sure that there is something thrilling about a monster pumpkin suspended 100 feet in the air hurtling down to smash a car.

"It was a direct hit," he said. "It went straight through the car, just crushed the thing."

Farther north, in the Seattle area, he's heard of scuba divers hauling giant pumpkins into Puget Sound to carve underwater.

And back East, giant pumpkin growers have been known to cut their fruits in half, attach an outboard motor and race them. "I've never seen it myself," he said.

At least one of his pumpkins has gone to feed the elephant at the Portland zoo, he said.

"He kicked it around a while then stomped it," Daletas said.

In addition to the $2,000 purse, Chinook Winds Casino and the growing club ponied up an additional $1 per pound for the winner, Daletas said, to harvest a total of $3,385. Considering his labor, it came out to about 30 cents an hour, he said.

His heavyweight winner wasn't his only triumph this season. He also hauled before the judges a comely, though slightly more diminutive squash, a 1,019-pounder that took third place in the pumpkin beauty contest known as the Golden Globe.

"It's symmetrical. It's got nice grooves and a good salmon color," he said.

While his world-class pumpkin will stay on display at Hoffman Dairy, he brought the beauty contest winner back with him where it can be seen during harvest and Halloween celebrations at Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm.

He hauled it over to Bob and Lynn Schutte's place on Monday as a gift to thank them for helping load his pumpkins with their forklift each year.

Usually Daletas offers them one of his 300-pounders.

"The kids are just going to be astounded," said Lynn Schutte.

For those who like pumpkins airborne, the Schuttes have a pumpkin catapult and promise pumpkin flinging as part of the festivities.

ONE GREAT PUMPKIN

Steve Daletas loaned one of his award-winning pumpkins to Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm, where it will be displayed through the month.

Colonial Harvest Days: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays throughout October at Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm, 36777 Wheeler Road, Pleasant Hill. Activities include a hayride, a pie-eating contest, face-painting, a haunted hayride through the "Dark Forest" and ecosystem displays for children. Cost is $5 per person, $20 per family.

CAPTION(S):

Steve Daletas of Pleasant Hill took top honors at a contest in Canby for a 1,385-pound pumpkin.