Getty Image / Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency
Travis Gienger is a Horticulture teacher from Minnesota who just grew and weighed a record-breaking 2,560-pound pumpkin. It is now the largest pumpkin ever grown and weighed in North America but it did stop short of setting a new Guinness World Record.
Mr. Gienger set his record at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California. He obviously won this year’s competition after weighing his 2,560-pound pumpkin, the largest in North American history. This is the second time in three years that Travis Gienger has rolled into town and dominated the competition, he also won the event in 2020.
Minnesota Man Breaks Record With This 2,560-Pound Pumpkin
Gienger also holds the 2020 champion title for a pumpkin that weighed in at 2350 lbs! This is only his second year competing. @abc7newsbayarea
— Lena Howland (@LenaHowland) October 10, 2022
Unfortunately, Gienger did not break the World Record which would have come with an additional $30,000 grand prize. That’s still being held by Stefano Cutrupi with a pumpkin weighing in at 2,703 lbs at a 2021 weigh-off in Italy! @abc7newsbayarea
— Lena Howland (@LenaHowland) October 10, 2022
He is clearly a man who has figured life out. I’m getting vibes of that moment in Forrest Gump when people see Forrest out running so they just start following him. That’s what I want to do with Pumpkin Man. I need him to teach me the art of growing grotesquely large pumpkins simply because we can. This is the peak of human achievement.
Back in 2020 when Horticulture professor Travis Gienger first won the ‘Super Bowl of Pumpkins,’ he was nicknamed the ‘Tiger King’. I can’t help but wonder if that nickname has withstood the test of time or if that was a nickname that came and went with the actual Tiger King fad.
His journey to a record-setting win
According to ABC 7 News, Mr. Gienger nicknamed this 2,560-pound pumpkin ‘Maverick’. And in order to get Maverick to the competition he had to drive it 35 hours from Anoka, Minnesota to Half Moon Bay for the competition. Here is his pumpkin after a forklift was used to load it onto the truck for the drive:
Long before that, he was basically growing a ‘2,000 square foot plant’ as he described it. Travis Gienger said “this size, I’ve been hitting it with fertilizer 14 times a day, watering quite a bit but I had a really big plant too, most people don’t understand this was like a 2,000 square foot plant that was just a monster,” and added “they all said it was a once in a lifetime type thing and gosh, hopefully we can do it as a two in a lifetime type thing.”
I wish I could quote how expensive it would be to spray fertilizer on a 2,560-pound pumpkin 14 times a day while feeding it but I don’t have those figures. But consider this mind-blowing stat: under perfect conditions, a single pumpkin can grow 60 pounds a day. It’s not uncommon for them to gain 20-40 pounds in a day when they’re massive but SIXTY pounds in a single day is just wild.
Here’s his 2,350-pound pumpkin from two years ago:
For his effort, Mr. Gienger earned $9/pound. With a 2,560-pound pumpkin that added up to a whopping $23,040 for his pumpkin named Maverick. It seems likely he will continue to compete in the ‘Super Bowl of Pumpkins’ in Half Moon Bay and hope to one day break the Guinness World Record, a 2,703-pound pumpkin that was weighed in Italy in 2021.
You can find Travis Gienger on Instagram at @TravisPumpkins to follow along as he grows the largest pumpkins ever weighed in North America!