Half Moon Bay champion wins by a margin of just 6 pounds
Winner Travis Gienger is the 2024 Half Moon Bay champion with a 2,471 pound-pumpkin at the Safeway World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off. Photo courtesy of Half Moon Bay Pumpkin and Art Festival Photo courtesy Half Moon Bay Pumpkin and Art Festival
Although it produced no new world record, this proved to be a great pumpkin season with plenty of humongous examples from coast to coast.
Halloween Eve is a good time to recap the annual giant gourd race, including the latest results from over-sized squash meccas.
The conclusion: They know how to grow them super-sized in Minnesota (and Michigan, too).
For the fourth time, Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minn., trucked a pumpkin as big as a Smartcar more than 2,000 miles (and 30 hours) to win the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off at the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival. This year’s champion giant pumpkin tipped the scales at 2,471 pounds. For his gargantuan effort, Gienger earned $9 a pound – $22,239.
Gienger’s 2024 champion won by only 6 pounds over a California-produced monster. In second place at 2,465 pounds was a Santa Rosa pumpkin grown by Brandon Dawson. (He earned $3,000 for his runner-up squash.)
But Gienger’s 2024 entry wasn’t a world record. That honor goes to his 2023 Half Moon champion, which weighed in at 2,749 pounds (and is now listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the all-time biggest pumpkin).
Locally, the 2024 Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin Festival champion weighed in at comparatively light 1,967 pounds; it was grown by Ruben Frias of American Canyon. (Frias earned $7,000 for the win.)
What’s probably the nation’s biggest pumpkin of 2024 is now on display at the New York Botanical Garden; it’s 2,670 pounds and grown by Earl Thompson of Rockford, Mich. This giant is part of the garden’s annual Great Pumpkin Commonwealth display, which also included a 2,457-pounder from New Hampshire.
For more on giant pumpkins: https://gpc1.org/
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Garden Checklist for week of Nov. 3
November still offers good weather for fall planting:
* If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the remains of summer. Pull faded annuals and vegetables. Prune dead or broken branches from trees.
* Now is the best time to plant most trees and shrubs. This gives them plenty of time for root development before spring growth. They also benefit from fall and winter rains.
* Set out cool-weather annuals such as pansies and snapdragons.
* Lettuce, cabbage and broccoli also can be planted now.
* Plant garlic and onions.
* Keep planting bulbs to spread out your spring bloom. Some possible suggestions: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, anemones and scillas.
* This is also a good time to seed wildflowers and plant such spring bloomers as sweet pea, sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons.
* Rake and compost leaves, but dispose of any diseased plant material. For example, if peach and nectarine trees showed signs of leaf curl this year, clean up under trees and dispose of those leaves instead of composting.
* Save dry stalks and seedpods from poppies and coneflowers for fall bouquets and holiday decorating.
* For holiday blooms indoors, plant paperwhite narcissus bulbs now. Fill a shallow bowl or dish with 2 inches of rocks or pebbles. Place bulbs in the dish with the root end nestled in the rocks. Add water until it just touches the bottom of the bulbs. Place the dish in a sunny window. Add water as needed.
* Give your azaleas, gardenias and camellias a boost with chelated iron.
* For larger blooms, pinch off some camellia buds.
* Prune non-flowering trees and shrubs while dormant.
* To help prevent leaf curl, apply a copper fungicide spray to peach and nectarine trees after they lose their leaves this month. Leaf curl, which shows up in the spring, is caused by a fungus that winters as spores on the limbs and around the tree in fallen leaves. Sprays are most effective now.
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