On April 15, Ron Wallace tucked a small seed into the soil in his greenhouse in Greene, Rhode Island. Nearly six months later, that seed had grown into a massive pumpkin—one so big it would set a new world record. On October 10, Wallace’s enormous gourd officially weighed in at 3,156 pounds at the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off, becoming the first pumpkin to ever top 3,000 pounds.
Wallace now holds the Guinness World Record for the heaviest pumpkin, smashing the nearly 2,857-pound record set just a week earlier. Wallace was introduced to the hobby by his dad, who he says was one of the first New Englanders to grow giant pumpkins, according to a statement. Decades later, he still loves seeing people’s reactions when they encounter one of these gargantuan gourds.
They want to get photos with it.” He adds: “A giant pumpkin brings a smile to everybody’s face, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what nationality you are. Giant pumpkins don’t care about any of that.” This isn’t the first time Wallace has grown a record-setting pumpkin. In 2006, he grew a 1,502-pounder, the first to break 1,500 pounds, according to the statement.
He reached another milestone in 2012 with a 2,009-pound pumpkin, the first to surpass 2,000 pounds. Those two previous world records were “historic accomplishments at the time, but this one feels a bit more special,” Wallace says in the statement. It felt great to see it all come together.” This year, Wallace’s victory was decisive.
While growers typically top the current champion by just 20 to 30 pounds, his pumpkin topped the previous record—set by British grower Ian Paton on October 3—by nearly 300 pounds. Longest-held pumpkin record A 2,624.6-pound pumpkin grown by Belgian farmer Mathias Willemijns in 2016 held the record for the world’s heaviest pumpkin for almost five years. You might think there’d be some bad blood between such fierce competitors.
But Wallace and Paton are friends who talk “weekly, sometimes daily” during the growing season, Wallace tells the Providence Journal’s Mark Patinkin. In fact, it was Paton who first suggested that Wallace should try growing his pumpkins in a greenhouse. Wallace took the advice, and it paid off.
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