Growers across the U.S. gathered at the 53rd Annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off this week to crown a new winner for producing the heaviest gourd.
The annual weigh-off took place Monday in Half Moon Bay, California, and the winning pumpkin weighed in at a whopping 2,389 pounds, according to the competition website.
Travis Gienger, a former world record-holder and four-time pumpkin weigh-off champion from Minnesota, took home this year's top prize of $21,501 – earning $9 per pound for his massive 2,389 pound pumpkin.
Travis's pumpkin measured an incredible 510 inches Over the Top (OTT), a measurement used by competitive growers to estimate weight based on a pumpkin's external dimensions. To put that into perspective, Ian Paton's
recently crowned 2,856.8-pound world-record pumpkin in Berkshire, England, measured just 507 inches OTT.
How much do giant pumpkins weigh?
A pumpkin is considered giant if it weighs more than 150 pounds. PBS reported that some giant pumpkins can grow 40-50 pounds a day with the help of fertilizer and hundreds of gallons of water. Once these pumpkins are cut from their vines, they can lose 6 to 8 pounds a day.
Previously, Travis Gienger, a horticulture and landscape teacher at Anoka Technical College, grew a 2,471-pound pumpkin in 2024, but that was not his largest, by far. In 2023, he broke the world record for plumpest pumpkin on the planet with a 2,749-pound monster gourd. Gienger has won the Half Moon Bay pumpkin weigh-off three years in a row starting in 2022.
Gienger's 2023 winning pumpkin was the equivalent weight of an adult male walrus.
What have pumpkins weighed in the past at Half Moon Bay?
What began in 1974 as a friendly challenge between Half Moon Bay, California, and Circleville, Ohio, has evolved into one of the world’s premier giant pumpkin competitions. Half Moon Bay won that original showdown with a pumpkin weighing just 132 pounds.
Since the competition began, pumpkins have steadily increased in size. In 2023, the winning pumpkin had increased in weight by nearly 2000% compared with the 1974 winning pumpkin.
How much do the largest pumpkins weigh?
Rhode Island pumpkin grower Ron Wallace made giant-pumpkin history on Oct. 10 after growing a massive 3,156-pound pumpkin, believed to be the first recorded pumpkin to top 3,000 pounds. Wallace brought his enormous entry to the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off at Frerichs Farm in Warren, Rhode Island. The pumpkin could set a new world record, surpassing the previous mark by nearly 300 pounds, pending official certification by Guinness World Records.
Ian Paton of Lymington, England, currently holds the Guinness World Record for the heaviest pumpkin. On Oct. 3, he set the new record with his extraordinary pumpkin, Bagheera, which weighed 2,856.8 pounds. This massive gourd surpassed the previous record of 2,819 pounds, set in 2023 by Ian and his twin brother, Stuart, and was weighed in Berkshire, England.
History of pumpkin weigh-off competitions
Jack La Rue, a former competitive grower who’s now a historian and statistician for the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth – the international ruling body for weigh-off contests – said the pursuit of record-setting pumpkins dates back to at least the late 1800s.
At the 1900 world’s fair in Paris, William Warnock set the recognized mark at 400 pounds and topped it by 3 pounds in 1904. That record stood for 72 years until Bob Ford smashed it with a 451-pound gourd. In 1980, Canadian Howard Dill gave the movement a major push when he set one of his three world records with a 459-pound pumpkin the year after developing Dill’s Atlantic Giant Pumpkin seeds.
Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund
Source Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pumpkin king strikes again with another Walrus-sized gourd
