Giant-pumpkin season produced a possible new world record this fall, after Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island grew a pumpkin that tipped the scales at 3,156 pounds at the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off at Frerichs Farm in Warren, Rhode Island. The weight, confirmed by official scale-weigher John Russo, is nearly 300 pounds heavier than the existing world record of roughly 2,857 pounds, held by England's Ian Paton. Guinness World Records had not yet issued formal certification as of this week.
A continent away — or at least a coast away — Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, won his fifth grand prize at the 53rd Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California, with a 2,389-pound entry named "Rocky," measuring 138 inches long, 131.5 inches wide and 231 inches around. The win earned Gienger roughly $900 per pound in prize money. He is something of a recurring celebrity in the sport: a previous Gienger pumpkin, Maverick, was later carved into the world's largest jack-o'-lantern in 2022, and other past winners of the Half Moon Bay contest include basketball star Michael Jordan, whose 2,749-pound entry set a world record at the time in 2023.
The Half Moon Bay weigh-off, which traces its rivalry with a sister contest in Circleville, Ohio back to 1974, remains a fixture of fall competitive growing, drawing a dedicated subculture of "pumpkin chasers" who track lineage, growing techniques and scale readings with the intensity of any other sport. Whether Wallace's Rhode Island giant ultimately earns the official world-record title now depends on Guinness's review — a process that, unlike the weigh-off itself, comes with no live audience and no immediate declaration of a winner.