For the second year in a row and the fourth time overall, Travis Gienger won the 51st Safeway World Pumpkin Weigh-in Championship. This year’s top prize winner, Rudy, clocked in at £2,471. If you can’t quite imagine how hard that is, it is twice as heavy as a grizzly bearhalf as heavy as a rhino, two-thirds as heavy as a car, and enough to flavor 74,794 Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Gienger will receive prize money of nine dollars per poundanother, a pumpkin grower’s championship ring, a champion’s jacket and a two-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, where the competition is held every October. The horticulture teacher from Minnesota’s record-breaking 2023 entry weighed 2,749 pounds and was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records. Gienger also shares the world record for the largest jack-‘o-lantern by circumference. He won this prestigious honor in October 2022 for a pumpkin that looked like an eagle with a circumference of 600 centimeters.
‘I didn’t think I would get anything in June’ Giegner said after the game ended. “If you had talked to me in June, I would have said, no, our weather is way too wet, way too cold.”
The annual one Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival attracts thousands of visitors to Half Moon Bay, California each year for multiple pumpkin-themed activities. The coastal city is known for its large pumpkin fields.
Growing giant gourds like these first took off in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the first 1,000 pounder hit the pumpkin growing market. Growers use special seeds that are swapped annually to create giant gourds. Normally, a pumpkin’s growing season can last more than 100 days, giving them more time than other crops to reach these gargantuan proportions. They also have a thick and woody skin that protects pumpkins better than other vegetables with a higher water concentration.
[Related: How do you breed a 2,624-pound pumpkin?]
Most record-breaking pumpkins are Dill’s Atlantic Giants. These are bred to produce increasingly larger offspring. Some past award winners might have some innate advantages, including larger vascular tissue or a natural ability to grow faster, resist pests or absorb more nutrients from the soil.
When they’re not flavoring lattes or cutting up for jack o’lanterns, pumpkins and other gourds are a healthy food to eat. They are packed with nutrients that support the immune system, are good for the heart and their versatility makes them easy to use in different types of dishes.
