A Minnesota man set a U.S. record this month for the heaviest pumpkin. That giant gourd weighed 2,560 pounds, or about as much as a small car.
Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota, set the record while winning the 49th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. Winners of the annual contest, which has been held since 1974, are almost always from California, Oregon or Washington state.
“Minnesota has a great midyear, but our spring in our parts is really, really tough. So to do it in Minnesota, it just shouldn’t happen,” Gienger said. “It’s like winning the Tour de France on a big wheel. You know, you can only hope. But it worked.”
And this wasn’t the first time. Gienger won the same contest in 2020. But this time, he also set the record, which was held for a week by Scott Andrusz of Williamsville, New York, who raised a 2,554-pound pumpkin.
Stefano Cutrupi holds the world record for the heaviest pumpkin. Cutrupi, who is from Radda, Italy, grew a 2,702-pound squash in September 2021, according to Guinness World Records.
What do you know about pumpkins?
Pumpkins come in many colors other than orange. They can be yellow, green, red, white, pink and even blue.
They aren’t a vegetable. They’re a fruit because they are the seed-producing part of a flowering plant.
Atlantic Giant pumpkins are among the biggest. Most contest winners are this variety.
Illinois is the biggest pumpkin-producing state. In 2021, it produced 652 million pounds. Most of this was turned into processed food, such as pumpkin pie filling.
The oldest pumpkins seeds discovered were in Mexico and thought to be from about 7000 B.C.
The earliest jack-o’-lanterns were not made from pumpkins. Irish people and Scottish people once carved scary faces in turnips to scare away evil spirits.
