Giant pumpkin season weighs in with tons of winners

Although it produced no new world record, this proved to be a great pumpkin season with plenty of humongous examples from coast to coast.

Halloween Eve is a good time to recap the annual giant gourd race, including the latest results from over-sized squash meccas.

The conclusion: They know how to grow them super-sized in Minnesota (and Michigan, too).

For the fourth time, Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minn., trucked a pumpkin as big as a Smartcar more than 2,000 miles (and 30 hours) to win the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off at the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival. This year’s champion giant pumpkin tipped the scales at 2,471 pounds. For his gargantuan effort, Gienger earned $9 a pound – $22,239.

Gienger’s 2024 champion won by only 6 pounds over a California-produced monster. In second place at 2,465 pounds was a Santa Rosa pumpkin grown by Brandon Dawson. (He earned $3,000 for his runner-up squash.)

But Gienger’s 2024 entry wasn’t a world record. That honor goes to his 2023 Half Moon champion, which weighed in at 2,749 pounds (and is now listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the all-time biggest pumpkin).

Locally, the 2024 Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin Festival champion weighed in at comparatively light 1,967 pounds; it was grown by Ruben Frias of American Canyon. (Frias earned $7,000 for the win.)

What’s probably the nation’s biggest pumpkin of 2024 is now on display at the New York Botanical Garden; it’s 2,670 pounds and grown by Earl Thompson of Rockford, Mich. This giant is part of the garden’s annual Great Pumpkin Commonwealth display, which also included a 2,457-pounder from New Hampshire.