But it's only good enough for second place as Minnesota mega-gourd breaks world record at championship weigh-off
This pumpkin set a new world record, weighing 2,749 pounds, from Minnesota. Winner Travis Gienger and his family pose with the massive gourd at Monday's Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. Photos courtesy Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off
Representing Central Valley pumpkin hopefuls, Ron Root and Nick Kennedy of Citrus Heights hauled their gargantuan gourd to Half Moon Bay for Monday’s Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off.
They could have easily won Elk Grove’s Giant Pumpkin Contest, held Saturday and won by an Oregon-grown 1,941 pounder. (Russ Pugh took home to Eugene $7,000 from the Elk Grove contest.)
Instead, Root and Kennedy took their big boy to the Bay Area to see if maybe they had a record breaker.
They did. Shaped like a bean bag chair and the size of a couch, the striped Citrus Heights pumpkin set a California state record as the largest ever grown in the Golden State – quite a feat considering this was the 50th annual Half Moon Bay weigh-off to crown a pumpkin king.
For a while, the Citrus Heights pumpkin looked like an overall winner, but then officials hauled out the pumpkin that had traveled the farthest distance to the contest – an Atlantic Giant hybrid grown by Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minn.
A landscape business owner and instructor at Anoka Technical College, Gienger and his pumpkin team had driven almost non-stop from Minnesota to Half Moon Bay just in time for the weigh-off. He didn’t harvest his pumpkin until Saturday because these giants lose 5 pounds every day off the vine.
Gienger wasn’t a long shot; he was Half Moon Bay’s defending champion. Last year, he set a new America record with a 2,560-pound pumpkin that he also hauled cross country. But no one expected this result Monday (except for the folks tasked with lifting the pumpkin on the scale).
Gienger’s pumpkin weigh 2,749 pounds – a new world record and almost 200 pounds bigger than his 2022 American record setter. The old mark – 2,702 – was held by a pumpkin grown in Tuscany, Italy.
Watch Gienger’s reaction as his pumpkin is weighed, during live streaming of Monday’s weigh-off:
https://www.facebook.com/halfmoonbaypumpkinweighoff/videos/1978543425879509
For its official photo, the winning pumpkin was adorned with a teddy bear wearing a Michael Jordan jersey – as the “greatest of all time” in the pumpkin department.
For his efforts, Gienger won $30,000 including a bonus for a new world record. As runners-up, Root and Kennedy earned $4,000 including a $1,000 bonus for the largest California-grown pumpkin.
For more on the championship pumpkin weigh-off: https://weighoff.miramarevents.com/.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
June 17: Help pollinators help your garden
June 10: Battling early-season tomato pests
June 3: Make your own compost
May 27: Where are the bees when you need them?
May 20: How to help tomatoes thrive on hot days
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of June 15
Make the most of this “average” weather; your garden is growing fast! (So are the weeds!)
* Warm weather brings rapid growth in the vegetable garden, with tomatoes and squash enjoying the heat. Deep-water, then feed with a balanced fertilizer. Bone meal can spur the bloom cycle and help set fruit.
* Generally, tomatoes need deep watering two to three times a week, but don’t let them dry out completely. That can encourage blossom-end rot.
* From seed, plant corn, melons, pumpkins, radishes, squash and sunflowers.
* Plant basil to go with your tomatoes.
* Transplant summer annuals such as petunias, marigolds and zinnias. It’s also a good time to transplant perennial flowers including astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia, salvia and verbena.
* Pull weeds before they go to seed.
* Let the grass grow longer. Set the mower blades high to reduce stress on your lawn during summer heat. To cut down on evaporation, water your lawn deeply during the wee hours of the morning, between 2 and 8 a.m.
* Tie up vines and stake tall plants such as gladiolus and lilies. That gives their heavy flowers some support.
* Dig and divide crowded bulbs after the tops have died down.
* Feed summer flowers with a slow-release fertilizer.
* Mulch, mulch, mulch! This “blanket” keeps moisture in the soil longer and helps your plants cope during hot weather. It also helps smother weeds.
* Thin grapes on the vine for bigger, better clusters later this summer.
* Cut back fruit-bearing canes on berries.
* Feed camellias, azaleas and other acid-loving plants. Mulch to conserve moisture and reduce heat stress.
* Cut back Shasta daisies after flowering to encourage a second bloom in the fall.
* Trim off dead flowers from rose bushes to keep them blooming through the summer. Roses also benefit from deep watering and feeding now. A top dressing of aged compost will keep them happy. It feeds as well as keeps roots moist.
* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushier plants with many more flowers in September.
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