Marilyn's Photos - Oct 6 2025 - The Biggest Pumpkin Is
This is the time of year when really big vegetables hit the news. There are lots of pumpkin contests now. We've been in Half Moon Bay, California, where you drive along Highway 1 and there are pumpkin patches on the ocean-side of the highway. Magical!
But the biggest pumpkin festival int he world is in Germany - Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival. It runs from August 23 to Nov 2 2025. That sounds more like a fall fair and beer festival to me.
In Canada where we grow a lot of pumpkins, the largest so far is 2,537 pounds in Alberta in 2022.
The world's largest pumpkin was 2,749 pounds in 2023 grown in Minnesota - at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay. How did they get a pumpkin in one piece from Minnesota to California? That's a question as interesting as how to grow a pumpkin that big.
Supposedly, Henry David Thoreau grew a pumpkin in 1857 weighing 123 pounds and he wrote about it, so he stands as an historical marker for giant pumpkins.
"A giant pumpkin is an orange fruit that is a cultivar of the squash Cucurbita maxima, commonly weighing from 68 kilograms (150 lb) to over 910 kilograms (2,010 lb)."
This is not the pumpkin we make pie out of or carve for Halloween so don't feel bad about the pumpkins you grow. These cultivars have been sold since 1834, so Thoreau came late to the game.
Being so big, they can grow up to 50 pounds a day. As they grow huge, they "pancake" out and may collapse under their own weight. A cracked pumpkin is a disqualified from competition pumpkin.
So it is just a week or so away - October 13th - and we'll find out if there is a new largest pumpkin champion.
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