Thomas Boyd, of 205 Sunrise Ridge Drive, has tried his luck with cantaloupes the last couple of summers, but he hasn’t seen great results until now.
So far this summer, Boyd has picked 42, giving may of them away to friends. “You can’t eat all of them,” he said.
The largest of the 42 cantaloupes was roughly the size of a basketball, followed by another bowling-ball size. Although he did not get an exact weight, Boyd said, “I know it’s heavy from carrying it.”
Gardening is simply a hobby. He also grows tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables.
Boyd said that this is the first summer he has seen such large melons. He didn’t do anything special to them.
He and wife, Norma Jean, moved to Salisbury in 1997 from Illinois. They both have children from previous marriages; she has a son and daughter and he has two sons. Between the two of them, there are nine grandchildren.
Boyd brought his melon in Tuesday, making him the leader in that category for a day. But Wednesday, Paul Pittman bested him.
Pittman, of 5820 Mooresville Road, has quite a patch of cantaloupes. This week he pulled up a 25 pound 2 ounce melon, slightly larger than a basketball.
But this isn’t the first Pittman has seen. A couple weeks ago he pulled a 23-pounder.
Pittman said that he didn’t do anything special to the fruit. “I grew it with thin fertilizer, water and love,” he said.
“First thing in the morning and last thing at night,” he checks on his garden. Living by himself, a heart patient with diabetes, gardening is therapeutic for him.
Pittman lived in Kannapolis nine years before moving to Salisbury in 1967. Now retired, he worked in the textile industry and owned his own restaurant in South Carolina.
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