HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — A Minnesota horticulture teacher remained the reigning champion Monday of an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California where his massive gourds have won the top prize four years in a row.
Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota, beat his closest competitor by 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) to clinch the victory at the 51st World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
His winning gourd came in at 2,471 pounds (1,121 kilograms), falling short of the world record he set last year with a pumpkin weighing 2,749 pounds (1,247 kilograms).
Gienger, 44, said that as he has done in the past, he focused on having healthy soil and well-fed plants but that a cold fall with record-breaking rain likely impacted his pumpkin’s growth.
“We had really, really tough weather and somehow, some way, I kept on working,” Gienger said. “I had to work for this one, and we got it done at the end, but it wasn’t by much.”
Gienger and his family drove his gargantuan gourd for 35 hours to California.
He said the giant pumpkin’s next stop will be in Southern California, where a team of professional carvers will do a 3D carve on it at a Halloween event.
Gienger has quite a winning streak.
At the same contest last year, he nabbed the Guinness World Record for the heaviest pumpkin with the previously mentioned orange orb that topped out at a whopping 2,749 pounds, besting the old record of 2,702 pounds 13.9 ounces for a pumpkin grown by Stefano Cutrupi from Radda in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy.
Cutrupi’s entry was the first-ever giant gourd to surpass the 2,700-pound mark, according to Guinness.
Meanwhile, also last year, a pumpkin grown in upstate New York tipped the scales at 2,554 pounds, setting a state and U.S. record. Scott Andrusz’s entry broke the previous national record of 2,528 pounds.
Advertisement
