The first of September and Monday of the long weekend brought hundreds to the Maples Community Centre in Winnipeg for Upo Festival.
Upo is a vegetable, more commonly known as a bottle gourd. Different varieties are used in Filipino cuisine.
This annual competition, now in its fifth year, isn’t just about which gardeners can grow the longest or heaviest upo. It’s about bringing the community together through food.
“We’re used to planting a lot of food and vegetables (in the Philippines) and we brought it. The culture now is here,” said Denny Nangan, with 204 Volunteers Inc., Caring Manitobans in Action.
“The goal of this is not just to win prizes but also to encourage the community to be self-sufficient.”
Nangan, one of the organizers of the grassroots, Filipino-led group of volunteers, who hosts the Upo Festival, says each year the competition has grown bigger.
“It’s going beyond the Filipino community and we encourage that. We want every community to have this awareness that they can plant on their backyard and be more secure in their food and have this good practice every year, to plant. Plant and share,” said Nangan.
He said he was pleased to see one the very first registrants of the day was someone outside of the Filipino and hopes more people become aware of the festival and join.
“It’s becoming more multicultural, which is what Winnipeg is about.”
Brix Del Carmen has won multiple Upo Festivals, including in 2024. He says this year’s dry spring really made an impact, so he was watering and caring for his plants every day and night.
“A lot of people want the seeds because it’s a taste of their culinary dish. They’re looking for that dish,” said Del Carmen. “Every night, I would have to go climb my 10-foot ladder and pollinate my upo.
“Before it blooms, I would put a plastic bag over (the female flowers) or tie it, so that way other bees or hummingbirds or any insects that would try to pollinate the flower, that way that would cancel that off before the flower opens. I would also have to cover the male flower with a plastic bag so that way there’s no cross-pollination happening. Then I would then cut the flowers and then I would pollinate it by hand.”
Last year, after winning both grand prize awards for growing the longest and heaviest upo, Del Carmen donated seeds to gardeners, of which many are competing alongside him this year.
“Probably around 50 people came around February. It was cold, even. They went and knocked on my door to go get some seeds in order to participate in the Upo Festival,” Del Carmen explained.
Nangan adding, “Last year what we did with the winning entries, we donated it to the seniors of the community and it kind of gave them this extreme happiness. Being awarded the winner, they were so happy.”
For the entire community, it’s a chance to learn gardening skills and make traditional foods from home easier to find.
“Everywhere now, there’s so many varieties of upos and different vegetables and I think it’s easy to find the seeds now. You just have to work hard in order to grow a giant vegetable,” said Del Carmen.
