HALF MOON BAY: A Minnesota horticulture professor remained the reigning champion Monday of an annual pumpkin weighing contest in Northern California, where his enormous pumpkins won first prize four years in a row.
Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota, beat his closest competitor by 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) to take victory at the 51st World Pumpkin Weighing Championships in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
His winning pumpkin weighed 1,121 kilograms (2,471 pounds), short of the world record he set last year with a pumpkin that weighed 1,247 kilograms (2,749 pounds).
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 rains likely affected the growth of his pumpkin.
“We had some very, very tough weather and somehow, I just kept working,” Gienger said. “I had to work for this and in the end we achieved it, but it wasn’t by much.”
Gienger and his family drove their giant pumpkin 35 hours to California.
He said the giant pumpkin’s next stop will be in Southern California, where a team of professional carvers will carve it in 3D at a Halloween event.
(This story is not edited by Republic and is published from a syndicated feed)
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