All Eyes On Elvira, Another Giant
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Elvira measures 66 inches around and is expected to weigh about 250 pounds.
WATER VALLEY – If you wander down behind Allen Rogers’ house, you’ll find Elvira. She’s not a neighbor, a dog or cat, or even a cow. Elvira is a watermelon. A great big watermelon. Big enough that later this week she’ll be loaded onto a trailer with the care of a prized show horse and driven all the way to Guston, Kentucky, for the Roberts Family Farm Largest Watermelon Contest on September 20.
Allen Rogers knows a thing or two about big watermelons. Just last year, he grew Josephine, the Mississippi state record holder at 274 pounds. Josephine had the looks and the weight, the kind of watermelon that makes growers nod in admiration. Elvira, by contrast, is a little squattier with a flat top, but she’s still got size on her side. At last check, she measured 66 inches around and was still gaining about half an inch a week. Rogers figures she’ll tip the scales at around 250 pounds.
“I hate to pull it,” he admits, almost sheepishly. “It’s still growing.”
Elvira may be the star this month, but Rogers is quick to point out that she isn’t quite in Josephine’s league. Still, in a year when weather, fungus, and plain bad luck have humbled even seasoned growers, a 250-pounder is no small feat.
He recalls one of the season’s heartbreaks: a promising melon growing in Tom Hill’s patch. That one, Rogers says, had the potential to be a giant before a fungus claimed it and a few others from local growers. “That watermelon would’ve weighed 250, maybe more.” Still, Hill did take top honors at the Watermelon Carnival with a smaller melon from his patch. “I wanted him to win so bad,” says Rogers.
Rogers himself has learned plenty this year. He abandoned plans for a hoop house when Mississippi’s humidity and heat proved too much, experimented with mats and cloths, and battled the same fungus that claimed other melons. “You live and learn,” he says with a shrug. He believe the strongest takeaway from this year is that the soil is the most important factor.
On Thursday, Rogers will gather a few strong friends to help load Elvira. By Friday morning, he and his wife, Martha, will be rolling out of Water Valley at 7 a.m., hauling not only Elvira but another from fellow grower Hal Vaughn. While Rogers is the one out in the patch measuring circumferences and tinkering with soil experiments, Martha is every bit a part of the journey. “We both enjoy it,” Rogers says. “We’ve got a lot of friends that compete every year.”
Rogers hopes Elvira will land him in the top five at Roberts Family Farm. “I’ll be happy as a lark if she makes 250,” he says.
But Elvira isn’t the end of the story. Another melon, Caroline, will head to Tennessee next month, along with a melon Martha will enter that is yet to be named.
And Rogers already has his eyes on next year. With Josephine’s state record in his pocket and a new plan for his patch, he’s ready to push harder. And where better to begin a new challenge than taking first place at the Watermelon Carnival, an honor he would like to add to his melon-growing accomplishments?
“Next year it’s gonna be an open field,” he says. “I’m gonna go for it.”
For now, though, all eyes are on Elvira. She may not have Josephine’s good looks, but she’s proof of what keeps Allen and Martha in the patch year after year.
