Some Halloween happy folks spend the fall decorating their front porch with pumpkins. Others grow pumpkins so enormous that transporting it to California requires a 30-hour road trip and a team effort behind the wheel. That’s the kind of dedication on display at the 53rd World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, where giant pumpkin growers are hoping to take home a hefty payday and possibly grow their way into the record books.
The annual competition kicks off Monday, October 12, with at least 30 growers bringing their heavyweight gourds to Northern California. According to the Associated Press, four-time champion Travis Gienger is among the contenders, and the Minnesota horticulture teacher may have grown a pumpkin big enough to challenge the world record.
Gienger knows a thing or two about growing monsters. He won the Half Moon Bay competition four years in a row before missing last year’s event after his pumpkin broke while it was still growing. This season brought another challenge, with temperatures dipping below freezing. Somehow, he still managed to grow a gargantuan pumpkin with a circumference that has organizers paying close attention.
Gienger and his father took turns driving the pumpkin from Minnesota to California over the weekend. The journey reportedly took around 30 hours, all to get a giant orange gourd roughly the size of a small car onto the scale. That’s a lot of effort for something that won’t even be making a giant pumpkin pie when the competition is over.
There’s a new benchmark to beat, too. Ian Paton, a grower from Lymington on England’s south coast, set a world record last week with a giant squash weighing 2,857 pounds, or 1,296 kilograms. That’s more than the weight of two and a half concert grand pianos. If Gienger or another grower manages to top that number, Half Moon Bay could have a new record holder before the day is over.
The growing methods behind these enormous pumpkins can be just as fascinating as the final weights. Paton grows his giant gourds in a greenhouse, while Gienger tends his pumpkins in the backyard of his home in Anoka, Minnesota, near the Mississippi River. Fowler, the event’s spokesman, told the AP that Gienger’s ability to grow such a massive pumpkin despite freezing temperatures is pretty unbelievable.
Last year’s champion is also returning to defend his title. Brandon Dawson of Santa Rosa, California, won the 2025 contest with a pumpkin weighing 2,346 pounds. That was an impressive haul, but this year’s competitors have their eyes on a prize that could require a whole new level of pumpkin power.
The competition pays its winner $9 for every pound of pumpkin. That means a gourd weighing 2,500 pounds would earn its grower $22,500 before any additional prize money. Break the world record, and there’s another $30,000 on the line. Suddenly, spending months tending to a pumpkin starts to sound like a pretty serious business.
The weigh-off also kicks off Half Moon Bay’s fall celebrations. The winning pumpkin is expected to appear during a parade through town this weekend, giving spectators a chance to see the champion up close. The festivities include a special appearance by pumpkin carver Mike Valladao, who will be working with pumpkins that are much better suited to carving than eating.
That’s the strange thing about these heavyweight champions: they’re grown for size, not flavor. Nobody is serving up a record-breaking slice of pumpkin pie at the end of this contest. These gourds are here to push the limits of what a pumpkin can become, and with a fresh world record already set in England, the growers in California have a very big number to chase.
If you are interested in growing giant pumpkins but can’t make it out to California this year, you can watch Grow, which came out last year and is on several streaming apps. This is a whimsical family comedy about Charlie, a lonely girl with a telepathic gift to grow plants, who is sent to live with her gruff, estranged aunt Dinah on a rural pumpkin farm. Together with their eccentric neighbor, they must protect a massive, magically grown prize pumpkin from ruthless rivals in time for the town’s annual harvest competition, healing their fractured family along the way.
Last little tidbit, did you know former Faith No More guitarist James Martin (he of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey fame) began growing giant pumpkins after he was fired from the band back in the ’90s? Love ya, James! Station!
