It isn't fall without pumpkins. So today, we visit a place that has some of the biggest in the world. Next week, growers from around the country will be hauling their gargantuan gourds, some the weight of a compact car, to the town of Half Moon Bay to see who’s squash is the most sizable.
“[I’ve] won two in Half Moon Bay, three in Elk Grove and two in the Heirloom festival. Here’s one for Grower of the year.”Leonardo Ureña
In the final moments of the 2023 Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, Travis Gienger, a grower from Anoka, Minnesota won the competition for the third time and broke the world record with his pumpkin weighing at 2,749 pounds – nearly the weight of a small compact car. While it’s a big feat, there’s still a lot of mystery as to how a pumpkin can be cultivated to be nearly 3,000 pounds.
Enter Leonardo Ureña, a landscaper by day in a winery in Napa and after hours, a grower that tries to grow the perfect specimens of long gourds and giant pumpkins on the set of land set aside by the winery.
“Here are the trophies I’ve won throughout the years,” Ureña said in Spanish. “[I’ve] won two in Half Moon Bay, three in Elk Grove and two in the Heirloom festival. Here’s one for Grower of the year.”
Those two in Half Moon Bay happened to be the biggest pumpkin award in 2011 and 2019. Last year, Ureña’s pumpkin came in at 1,894 pounds but didn’t come close to the winning one.
Cameron Palmer, President of the organizing committee and owner of Cameron’s Pub, shared a bit on how the pumpkins got so huge.
In just the first year of the competition, John Minaidis Sr. won the competition with a pumpkin weighing 132 pounds. From the years of being an emcee for the event, Cameron has gotten to know what’s the trick, he said it’s all in the type of pumpkin seed.
“They’re usually Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds,” Cameron Palmer said. “Sometimes they’ll – I don’t know the technical term – but [growers will] splice it with another pumpkin seed.”
What growers in clubs that are sanctioned by Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the governing body of pumpkin-weighing, do across the world is that they’ll trade seeds with each other. The purpose is to crossbreed and experiment with the seeds.
The weigh-off competition in its 51st year, the crossbreeding of seeds is partially the reason why winning pumpkins are tipping the scales more and more every year. John Minadis Sr.’s son, Tom Minaidis who still operates Tom and Pete’s Produce in Half Moon Bay, is still in the pumpkin business but looks at the weigh-off differently now.
“I don’t enter anymore,” Minaidis said. “[I] can’t come near those guys, they’re all over in Washington and other areas.”
Some of the out of town winners like Leonardo Ureña are ready to compete again in this year’s weigh-off competition. Ureña started by growing three pumpkin seeds in a greenhouse.
This year, he cross breeded a seed that came from Andy Wolf who grew a pumpkin weighing at 2,365 pounds in New York with his own seed that came from another pumpkin weighing 1,945 pounds.
“I started three here, it’s just that that one went bad,” Ureña said, pointing to his giant pumpkin field. “So I abandoned that one and I put molasses on it to attract pests and not bother [these two].”
When they began to bloom, he pollinated them himself because he doesn’t trust the bees. He makes a note of this to detail the heritage of the seeds.
“Look at these leaves, they’re from that pumpkin,” Ureña told a Coastside News reporter in Spanish. “To give you an idea, they’re like solar panels producing energy.”
Leonardo also relies on the green leaves to help the pumpkins grow because he says they’ll act like solar panels. The leaves will produce carbohydrates for the pumpkin and can help it gain 15 to 20 pounds a day.
Ureña shares a trick to determine if his pumpkin is healthy. He said if you tap a pumpkin, it has to sound like a tree trunk to determine there’s going to be weight.
“When you tap it here, it sounds like a tree trunk,” Ureña said in Spanish. “When you hit it and it sounds like a drum, it’s not a good sign – it’s hollow”
When it comes time to a weigh-off, Ureña fills out the form that asks him about how the pumpkin flower was pollinated, when was the pumpkin pollinated or when was the pumpkin cut.
This weekend, Leonardo Ureña will cut the stem of the heaviest of the two pumpkins and use a forklift to get it into his truck before making the trip down to Half Moon Bay Sunday afternoon.
Leonardo hopes he’ll be a contender but at the end of the day, he’s in it for the fun of the game and sharing more tips and tricks with other growers around the world.
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