Halloween is coming, and somewhere in America there's a pumpkin you'd need a forklift to carve.
A record that lasted one week
On 3 October, British grower Ian Paton weighed his pumpkin “Bagheera” at 1,295.8 kg and took the world record. He'd shared the old one with his twin brother Stuart.
Seven days later, on 10 October, Ron Wallace from Rhode Island put his pumpkin on the scales at a weigh-off near Warren: 1,431.5 kg, or 3,156 pounds. It's the first pumpkin ever to pass 3,000 pounds. That's roughly the weight of a car. Wallace said he was “beyond happy”.
And yes, scientists count pumpkins as fruit. So this might be the biggest fruit ever grown.
How do you grow a monster?
Wallace, 60, has done this before. He held the record in 2006 and again in 2012. This year he tried something new: a greenhouse. He planted the seed on 15 April and controlled the water and the heat himself. At its peak, the pumpkin put on up to “60 pounds a day, sometimes almost 500 pounds a week”. That's about 27 kg a day. Most of us can't manage that even at Christmas.
He also credits top seeds, near-perfect weather and tips from other growers. Fun bit of gossip: it was rival Ian Paton who first suggested the greenhouse idea.
What happens to it now?
Not soup, sadly. The pumpkin is going on tour to festivals in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and should become the world's largest jack-o'-lantern. After that, the compost heap. Its seeds will be given to pumpkin clubs to auction for charity.
And Wallace? He says he'll take next year off and let someone else “chase it for a year”. Fancy a go? He says you can start with about 14 square metres of garden.