For the second consecutive year and fourth time overall, Travis Gienger won the 51st Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. This year’s grand prize winner named Rudy clocked in at 2,471 pounds. If you can’t quite picture how heavy that is, it’s two times as heavy as a grizzly bear, half as heavy as a Rhinoceros, two-thirds as heavy as a car, and enough to flavor 74,794 pumpkin spice lattes.
Gienger will receive prize money of nine dollars per pound, another, a pumpkin grower champion ring, champions 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 carved to look like an eagle with a circumference of 242 inches.
“I didn’t think I’d have anything come June,” Giegner said after the competition concluded. “If you had talked to me in June I would have been like, no, our weather is way too wet, way too cold.”
The annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival draws thousands of visitors to Half Moon Bay, California every year for multiple pumpkin-themed activities. The coastal city is known for large pumpkin patches.
Growing gargantuan gourds like these first took off during the 1970s, but it was not until 1996 that the first 1,000 pounder hit the pumpkin growing scene. Growers use special seeds that are annually swapped to create giant gourds. Typically, a pumpkin’s growing season can last more than 100 days, giving them more time than other crops to reach these titanic proportions. They also have a thick and woody rind that protects pumpkins better than other vegetables that have a higher concentration of water.
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Most of the record-breaking pumpkins are Dill’s Atlantic Giants. These have been bred to produce increasingly large offspring. Some of the past prize winners could have some innate advantages, including larger vascular tissue or a natural ability to grow faster, resist pests, or take in more nutrients from the soil.
When they’re not flavoring lattes or getting carved up for jack o’lanterns, pumpkins and other squashes are a healthy food to eat. They are chock full of nutrients that support the immune system, are good for the heart, and their versatility makes them easy to fit into different types of dishes.