Caption: Chief pumpkin grower Ken Connell and President Lisa's Dad, Robbie, at the club's dedicated growing site.
Caption: President Lisa with Sunrise Club president Trish with the precious seedlings that club members will grow into monster pumpkins.
As president, I'm looking forward to some friendly rivalry during the Pumpkins for Polio competition.
Thank you to Ken Connell who was the first grower to register in our District, and our club has taken the lead with the number of registered growers for the project. We were given seedlings, while some of the clubs received seeds.
We will keep you updated on the pumpkin growing progress. If you would like to be involved we are looking for a volunteer to take the lead of co-ordinating the pumpkin sponsors eg keeping a record of who agreed to sponsor, how many pumpkins and if per kg or if just a donation.
The patch has been kindly "loaned" for this project by President Lisa-Maree's father, Robbie, and is located at Ascot Heights.
Our club is supporting this project and we want to be flexible so as many members can be involved in way that suits them around other committments they might have.
As a registered grower you can be as involved in the planting, watering, weeding (weekly or monthly) or you can simply gift your seedling to the club and Ken and Robbie will oversee the growing.
As a member you can also just be involved by supporting this project by sponsoring a pumpkin or helping us to get Pumpkin sponsors.
The simple action of putting a flyer up at your workplace or venues you visit and/or sharing within your other networks helps us promote this project, as well as letting people know Rotary's involvement and what Rotary is about.
Or, maybe you could help out with being on the "watering" roster in summer. It would be great to have some extra names that could visit the patch one day a week to water. Please let Ken know if you could help with this and we can create a roster so our pumpkin babies are not left unattended during holiday periods, or if someone is unavailable.
This is a fun project and a great way to get kids, grandkids involved in a Rotary Project, as well as informing and creating awareness of polio and Rotary's involvement to try and eradicate it worldwide.
We now need to appoint the leaders for the fundraising to work with members to get donors to support/sponsor our pumpkins.
If you would like to be involved either to assist with co-ordinating the names and sponsorship per kg or per pumpkin, or a donation please let President Lisa or President Elect Chami know before they start shoulder tapping people to be volunteers.
Looking for more info on what is Polio?
https://www.endpolio.org/
Did you know Bill Gates supports Rotary and the goal to eradicate Polio?
https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-and-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-extending-fundraising-partnership-eradicate-polio
Did you know?
The current New Zealand record for a pumplin is 844.5kg.
To read about tips and tricks to growing a giant pumpkin click on this link https://giantpumpkins.co.nz
Watch: Find out about more about Giant Pumpkins in New Zealand via these video clips.