Halloween arrived this week, and once again Linus, that lovable cartoon character in the late Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" series, watched for the Great Pumpkin.

Surprising as it might seem, there are people who actually do devote their lives searching each year for the Great Pumpkin.

They are "competitive growers ... on a mission to create steadily bigger monster pumpkins," Susan Warren writes in her new book "Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever" (Bloomsbury USA, $24.95).

Warren, who lives in North Texas, where she is a deputy bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, revisits the nationwide pumpkin competitions held in 2006. The goal for that year was a record-breaking pumpkin weighing 1,500 pounds.

That's a pumpkin so big and heavy that a forklift would be necessary to extract it from the field.

Despite the possibility of years of disappointment, giant-pumpkin contestants are obsessed. They will pay hundreds of dollars for prized seeds, spend countless hours in their patches and sacrifice human relationships.

Most are middle-aged men whose wives either leave or find a way to cope with their spouses' fixation. Unlike Cinderella's fairy-tale transport, a giant pumpkin in real life can drive a woman away from her prince. As one pumpkin-grower's T-shirt says: "My life is giant pumpkins — just ask my ex-wife."

"When he's not at work, he's out there, so I always know where my husband is," a coping wife tells Warren. Even so, she has to face the fact that the object of her husband's deepest attention is outside in the garden.

Not that this garden is a perfect love nest. Bad things happen there, including pumpkin murders — sabotage by treacherous rivals. Local police, pumpkin competitors soon learn, aren't likely to investigate squashicide.

Treachery in the garden can also come from Mother Nature. While giant-pumpkin growers search for "new ways to stretch the limits of Mother Nature," she can strike back with a vengeance. Too much or too little rain, too much or too little heat, or a sudden hail storm can easily smash a grower's hope. So can animals, insects and blights, especially the dreaded foaming stump slime.

Slits also ruin pumpkin love. Deep shell fissures disqualify pumpkins from competition because cheaters have used such small breaches to fill their contest entries with water for added weight. One rogue was caught when his beloved pumpkin sloshed too much while it was being hoisted onto a weighing scale.

There are other disappointments, such as pumpkin size failing to correspond to anticipated weight. "The frustration level runs very high," one disillusioned grower tells Warren.

Worst of all, though, is the rotted bottom, an affair-ending mushy secret that goes undetected until a forklift attempts to lift a potential prize-winner that suddenly crumbles to pieces.

Color, at least, is not a problem. Prize pumpkins can be white, yellow, orange, green, grey-blue and even pink. Pumpkins have always varied in color. Although orange shells are commercially preferred, during the past five years there has been a small revival of interest in the decorative use of variously hued pumpkins.

The shape of pumpkins varies, too, sometimes making them look more like squashes. Pumpkins are, in fact, a type of squash. "The biggest difference between the two plants is not botanical," says heirloom seed expert Lynn Coulter. "Instead, it's our habit of calling them one name or the other."

County fair contests for large pumpkins were common during the mid-19th century, when a "Mammoth Chili" variety was winning competitions at around 250 pounds. Contests didn't interest Henry David Thoreau, the famous author of "Walden," but he was nonetheless proud of his own 123-pound pumpkin in 1857. During the 1890s, 400-pounders were showing up at county fairs, but competitive pumpkin-growing became a truly weighty undertaking after a 612-pounder was recorded in 1984. Recent records have been set at 1,469 pounds in 2005, 1,502 in 2006 and 1,524 this year.

Giant pumpkins are very fibrous, making them good only for contests, animal food, jack-o'-lanterns and compost. For culinary use, there are varieties of small pumpkins, measuring less than 10 inches across, that have been bred for taste. They are very easy to grow: Just tuck a few seeds into a small mound of compost-enriched soil.

During the 17th century, New England colonists learned to grow and cook pumpkins from American Indians. The Puritans would bake small, hollowed-out pumpkins filled with milk, honey and spices.

Smaller might be better for eating, but sometimes even ordinary gardeners look for unusual ways to enhance the size of their pumpkins. One favorite technique comes from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy," which describes how a youngster raised a milk-fed pumpkin to win first prize at a county fair. By today's standards, of course, this big prairie pumpkin would seem downright puny.

But does milk work? A dilute solution (10 percent milk, 90 percent water) using skim or powdered milk and applied occasionally along the sides of a seed mound can contribute beneficial bacteria, enzymes and phosphorous. This might be more trouble than it's worth, since compost works as well.

Apparently giant pumpkins make some people think of enormous pumpkin pies. This was the case for the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio. In October 2006, according to "Guinness World Records," they baked a pumpkin pie weighing 2,020 pounds.

There is no record of how many pounds the locals gained after eating that pie.

Scheick, a University of Texas professor, is a contributing editor of Texas Gardener magazine.

Growing tips

• Locate an ample, sunny space (at least 8 feet by 8 feet).

• Plant dried or packet seeds between early March and mid-July.

• Enrich soil with organic matter.

• Form a small dirt mound.

• Plant 4 to 6 seeds 1 inch deep in the mound.

• Lightly mulch mound sides with straw.

• Thin seedlings to only two or three.

• Place thin, flat rocks beneath fruits early to prevent bottom-rot.

• Reduce the number of fruits on a vine to increase the size of remaining fruit.

• Harvest about 3 months after planting.

More information

• 'The Pursuit of Excellence: Lords of the Gourd' ( PBS Home Video, 2007, $24.99)

• 'Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever' (Bloomsbury USA, $24.95)