The Sundarban
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The pumpkin’s name used to be Muggle and it weighed as distinguished as a bull moose. At 2,819 kilos and over 21 ft in circumference, this astronomical gourd claimed the dual titles of “heaviest pumpkin” and “largest pumpkin by circumference” within the Guiness Guide of World Records on October 4, 2025.
For British twins Ian and Stuart Paton, it’s a arduous fought victory 51 years within the making. “When we had been 13, we had been given some seeds,” Ian Paton says. “One in all them grew correct into a 54-pound pumpkin and that used to be it. Once you grow one, you salvage pumpkin illness.”
Several of the twins’ pumpkins, loads of that are named for Harry Potter characters adore Hagrid, personal procedure painfully conclude through the years. In 2022, they nabbed the title of heaviest pumpkin within the UK—an honor, to develop definite, however not rather on par with beating the American citizens for world pumpkin domination. One may perchance well presumably deem that many years of conclude to misses would build someone off the immense pumpkin recreation for moral. But the Patons never thought to be stopping. Even now, even though Stuart has talked about he’s going to retire after this year, Ian plans to set up going.
“I deem it’s comely the sheer size—these items grow to the size of a small automobile,” he says. “It’s adore James and the Enormous Peach. You plant the seed and also you fabricate a monster.”
On the novel time, “pumpkin illness” is a global affliction, even though its roots are very distinguished American. In 1992, the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth used to be based in Indiana as a kind governing physique of the world of big vegatables and fruits. Though pumpkins are their raison d’être, they also preside over watermelons, tomatoes, and lengthy gourds. On the novel time, it oversees bigger than 70 officially sanctioned giant pumpkin weigh-off web sites from as a ways-off as South Africa, Japan, and Australia. The competition is fierce, the stakes high and typically profitable. But there’s an valid science behind growing gourds of unheard of size, and rather of little bit of ultimate fortune, too.
A short history of big pumpkins
Growers duking it out over giant vegetables is nothing novel. The Western Alaska Tell Dazzling has been keeping monster cabbage weigh-offs since the 1920s. The Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Competition Contest—the closing crown within the immense pumpkin world—first began succor in 1974. Aid then, the champion used to be a measly 132 kilos, a figure that has grown exponentially since.
In 2025, eIectrical automobile engineer Brandon Dawson gained the cease prize at the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California with his giant 2,346-pound pumpkin. Image: 2025 Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off Image: 2025 Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off
“At one point, no one thought we’d ever personal a one-ton pumpkin, however we got there, and we’re going previous it,” says Steve Reiners, a professor at the Faculty of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell AgriTech. In 2012, Ron Wallace from Rhode Island smashed thru the pumpkin glass ceiling with a specimen weighing 2,009 kilos. Since then, pumpkins personal reached Brobdingnagian proportions, with the 3,000-pound threshold growing gradually nearer.
“I read some years succor that some engineer got right here up with the figure that he thinks they also can salvage conclude to 20,000 kilos before it can perchance well presumably comely give device in on itself,” Reiner says. The exterior of an astronomical pumpkin is frequently a foot thick and sufficiently delicate you’d want a chainsaw to salvage thru it. “I deem what’s limiting us now is the season. You’ve handiest got so distinguished time to grow this.”
Muggle, the Paton twins’ pumpkin, grew from a seed to the size of Cinderella’s carriage in a mere 131 days.
All of it starts with a seed
As with many world file-smashers before it, the Patons’ prize pumpkin used to be an Atlantic Enormous, a unfold of Cucurbita maxima first developed within the Seventies. The seeds for these behemoths are handiest rather larger than that of a frequent jack o’ lantern, and they also grow at alarming speeds. Once the plants salvage going, the vines sprawl a foot a day in each and each direction. Early on, the grower must resolve his or her fighter from the infant pumpkins on the vine. By culling the smaller ones, they force the plant to focal point all of its energy on one.
“Our pumpkins can grow 70 kilos a day, so 700 kilos in 10 days,” Paton says with pleasure, then adds slyly, “Folks assert what conclude you feed them and I assert, ‘A small youngster day after day!’”
Jokes aside, pumpkin-growers feed these monstrosities an alarming quantity of water—within the case of the Patons’ pumpkins, about 130 gallons a day. “They’re thirsty,” Paton says. “They need no extra fertilizer [per square foot] than your frequent tomato plant would—comely bulked up, since it’s about 1,200 times your tomato plant.”
Connected Hobby Tales
Though growing giant pumpkins is totally an art, the champions recount that there’s no valid magic bullet or secrets and techniques to it. Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher at Anoka Technical Faculty in Minnesota, attributes his success to genetics, persistence, and cautious plant-management techniques. Every year, he fastidiously hand-pollinates his plants to mix the genes of the pumpkin with a huge circumference with a pumpkin with an exceptionally thick shell.
“You should a thick shell to fetch,” Gienger says, citing the truth that champions are typically ranked on weight. He would know. A four-time winner of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Competition Contest, Gienger place the North American file in 2022. In 2023, his 2,749-pound goliath nicknamed Michael Jordan place the outdated world file.
Care for the Patons,
