‘Pumpkin King’ brings forth fruit

By Rachael Van Horn

Assistant Editor

“Luke 8:14 And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

Bryan Baker isn’t just a gardener, he’s a champion.

“If someone’s gonna steal the show, it’s The Pumpkin King”, locals said.

Many who have had photos with Baker in his famous pumpkin suit, might know about his 2022 state champion record-setting 630- pound green squash, or his fourtime win for champion prettiest state pumpkin. Baker still holds the state record for a very special 75- pound butternut squash, among many other state and national wins.

His giant vegetables are so famous, Toyota sought him out to include his record-winning squash in their newest commercial for the Tundra pickup. Each year in Woodward, Baker’s giant pumpkins, weighing hundreds of pounds, are the focal point of the Woodward Main Street Giant Pumpkin Drop – a gloriously messy spectacle that features the pumpkins falling from 30- foot cranes. The event draws enormous crowds and never fails to thrill, said Woodward Main Street President Sarah Boyce.

“So I have four state records and I used to hold the record for the largest bushel gourd back in 2020,” Baker said.

The world of giant vegetables is almost as niche as it gets when one is talking about competitions. Perhaps the only thing with a more specialized, laborious focus replete with detail-obsessed practitioners might be the annual Snail Racing World Championships in Congham, England.

But if someone asks Baker about his passion for the craft, he will notmince words about his

See Pumpkin on Page 2

Bryan Baker, “The Pumpkin King” grooms a vine by taking off new growth that might sprout a new flower in order to steer all of the nutrients and water to two or three of the best choices for a giant pumpkin this season. (Photo by Rachael Van Horn )

journey into the world of giant pumpkin and vegetable cultivation and competition and how it all started with him face down in his own “dirt”.

“Well, it saved me,” he said emphatically. “In fact, it was what got me through my divorce.”

With a complex and sometimes traumatic childhood, Baker is a gardener with a lot on his mind.

Involved in the past with some addiction issues and alcohol, he said he felt early in 2012 that the Universe, or “something” was telling him he needed to continue to grow in his life and repair some of the damage he had been doing to his own life and health.

The messages bubbling up from his subconscious seemed to lead him to gardening. But the real momentum started a little like “Jack and the Bean Stock” – with just a few, kind of “magic” pumpkin seeds Baker and his then five-year-old daughter Timber had obtained in Oklahoma City.

“It was around 2008 and Timber and I planted our first garden ever,” he said. “Well, Timbre took first second and third place with those Pumpkins that year.”

Those plump, orange vegetables captured his imagination and they also helped feed his new expensive gardening habit, he said.

“Heck, I could enter a vegetable in just about every category and I was pulling down sometimes $500 from county fairs,” he said.

But deep inside, was a growing drive to cultivate the state’s largest pumpkins, he said. That endeavor began in earnest in 2014, when he got a DUI and lost his job, he said.

At that time, knowing he needed to refocus and start living a different life, Baker began doing some odd jobs to make money, which allowed him some spare time that he dedicated almost in an obsessive way, to learning how to cultivate the giants.

With a few wins under his belt at the county level, in 2016, Baker knew he was thrashing everyone bad enough that to be fair, he needed to compete at a higher level.

“But there was no club and no state-level competition anymore,” he said. “So me and two other guys started a statewide club.”

Former state record-holder Tom Rovenstine and another giant grower Dan Synder worked together with Baker to form Oklahoma Giant Pumpkin Growers. The organization opened its weigh-offs in Claremore in 2017, then moved to Bartlesville.

“After four years, the State Fair of Oklahoma asked us to move our weigh-offs there,” Baker said.

Since then Baker just continues to impress state and national judges alike. There are years when his champions pumpkins can garner as much as $50 per seed, after he harvests the giants.

He is a requested speaker at many different growers organizations and devotes his time to community service, recently offering to teach a local Girl Scouts club how to grow pumpkins. He also now serves on the Woodward Main Street Board.

He identifies his proudest moment as getting the chance to teach Jack Waddel of Grow Jack Outdoors how to grow giant vegetables.

“I spent two years teaching him. First at my place and then I made a trip to his place and taught him there,” Baker said.

These days you can find Baker running his popular, highly-specialized lawn care and landscape business.

About two years ago, he took over payments on his parents home when they wanted to downsize, so that he had room to perfect his giant pumpkin and seed genetics program.

If you drive over to southeast Woodward, you will almost certainly find him measuring the Ph of his water tank system, pouring just the right natural feed ingredients onto the plants, fluffing the ground around new growth and pollinating the most promising ones for this year.

He will most likely be choosing his top two or three flowers and then will be pruning any other growth, creating an almost super-highway of mega nutrients from vines that could easily produce 30 or more pumpkins to only feed one.

“That’s how you get that size,” he said.

It’s hot, hard, worrisome work, he said. All of the efforts he puts into the vines may be swept away in one violent windstorm. The hail may decimate his two to three hopefuls, a rat or mouse might find their way to it and destroy it for competition. Baker, covers the plants with shade, he runs a portable air conditioning unit to keep them cool on very hot days, he blankets the pumpkins in the cold to protect them from freezing and he creates a platform for them to sit on so they don’t mold or rot as they grow.

But something keeps him going, searching for the messages in the work. He wants to find the meaning out of each and every cultivation and take it home and perfect it for next year.

But there are times in everyone’s life when the “lights” flicker and the fervor dims. And for Baker that was the summer of 2023, after suffering a personal loss, he was weighed down from intense loneliness.

Yet, it was that pain that drove him to keep cultivating his own, deep spiritual life and it was that, which helped prune, shape and nourish his own growth, he said.

“If you’re sad and you’re mad, they (the pumpkins) know,” he said. “This year, I was struggling some. But once I got started with my small group of men at my church (Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church) it really helped me. I was struggling to get going this year and those guys made me feel like I had a family and that I wasn’t all alone on this earth. And they made me feel great.”

Bryan Baker explains the difference between a male and female flower and why it matters when doing the work of pollinations. (Photo by Rachael Van Horn )

Baker regularly takes his giant pumpkins to area and regional events to display them to amazing and excited children such as Noah and Sawyer Scott on this particular day. Seen here in his famous Pumpkin King Suit, he has taken a couple of his winners to Kenny Farms, a local attraction in Woodward that features farm animals and other farm attractions as well as its own pumpkin patch. (Photo by Rachel Hamilton Scott) Continued from Page 1