Elkville Teen Grows Huge Pumpkin

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[This spring it was just a package of "Giant Pumpkin" seeds from the Lowes Home Improvement store in Carbondale sitting on the kitchen counter. This week it became this gorgeous 153 pound pumpkin sitting in Elverado High School junior Dylan Dunmyer's back yard on North 8th Street in Elkville.

His "smaller" pumpkin--70 pounds--sits on the Dunmyer family's front porch.

Dylan wants to share his garden success story with others and hopes to enlist friends from his Elverado High School class to help him carve it before the upcoming Halloween season.

It could have, would have, or should have taken all honors at the recent Du Quoin State Fair home show, but hadn't ripened in time for the annual show.

Dylan says his secret was keeping the vine flowers pruned back so all of the moisture went straight to the pumpkins and keeping the garden weeded and fertilized.