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1,730-pound Pa. pumpkin takes prize at Ohio Valley weigh-off
By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK
CANFIELD
More than 40 giant pumpkins were lined up outside Parks Garden Center. One by one they were taken inside where an audience watched as they were weighed.
The giant pumpkin championship weigh-off is the culmination of a long, hard year’s work, said Tim Parks, site adviser for the Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers, sponsor of the event.
Quinn Werner of Saegertown, Pa., took the top honor at the 18th annual event on Saturday, with a giant pumpkin weighing 1,730.5 pounds.
Werner has been growing giant pumpkins for about 12 years. In that time, he’s come in first at the weigh-off six times.
“I love to compete,” he said. “It’s fun to watch [the pumpkins] grow.”
Growing giant pumpkins is a lot of work, Werner said. With chores such as watering and pruning, the work is almost constant.
“It’s a full-time job, on top of my full-time job,” he said. “I come home from work at 2:30, 3:00, and in the peak growing season, I’m out there till dark. It’s a lot of time.”
But, he said, it’s worth it, especially when he wins.
Werner started this year’s season with 12 plants and ended up with eight giant pumpkins.
There were fewer entries than usual this year, noted Parks, explaining, “With the weather, a lot of folks lost pumpkins.”
But people drive as far as seven hours to enter because it’s a well- respected weigh-off and because of the large number of entries, Parks said.
“You might not see this many big pumpkins at any one place,” he said. “That’s a world record on top 10 average. You can’t go anywhere in the world, other than today in Ohio, [where] you’ve seen 10 pumpkins that big all at one time. So we have people that come just to see that.”
Tony Gilch, his niece Alley Gilch; Melissa Little, and her daughter Ambrosia Little, drove more than an hour from Gibsonia, Pa., to see the giant pumpkins.
“We wanted to see how heavy these pumpkins can really get,” Gilch said. “It’s really interesting that you can grow a pumpkin up to 2,000 pounds. A lot of these guys spend their entire summers on one pumpkin. That’s pretty amazing.”
Gilch was the only one of the four who had attended the weigh-off in the past.
“It’s really cool,” his niece said.
She has never seen pumpkins that big.
“It would be neat if I could grow one this big,” she said.
Ambrosia Little wasn’t looking at size, though. She found a deep orange pumpkin that was her favorite.
“It’s clean,” she said. It weighed 568.5 pounds.
Parks, of Salem, came in second place in the weigh-off with a pumpkin weighing 1,670 pounds. Third place went to Paul and Cheryl Fulk of Halifax, Pa., with a pumpkin weighing 1,643 pounds.
The Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers comprises 275 members. It holds an annual weigh-off for the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which conducts over 100 weigh-offs in many countries to determine the world champion.