How do you grow a massive, 2,191-pound pumpkin?
Good soil, good seed and “a lot of love,” said Jeff Uhlmeyer, winner of Monday’s 48th Half Moon Bay pumpkin festival.
“It’s a beautiful pumpkin,” the 62-year-old Olympia, Wash., resident said soon after winning a hefty $19,719 prize. Two Napa residents took the second and third prize: Leonardo Urena with a 2,007-pounder and John Hawkley with a 1,857-pounder, respectively. The contest’s prize money increased last year from $7 a pound to $9.
The Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off started bright and early on Monday at 7 a.m. and lasted until around noon. As officials from the San Mateo County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office of Weights, Sealers, and Measures Gourds watched on, gourds were propped up on industrial-strength scales with forklifts and special harnesses.
Uhlmeyer, who won third place at the weigh-off in 2017, described his winning pumpkin this year as “rock solid.” The sandy-reddish gourd was planted in April, he said, and was almost lost to a heat wave that occurred in his state this summer.
“I thought I was going to lose it,” said Uhlmeyer, a former Washington State Department of Transportation employee who now works for a pavement consulting company. “It just grew and grew. It’s a very thick pumpkin. When I pulled it out of the patch earlier in the week, it was still growing.”
Uhlmeyer’s started growing pumpkins in 2009. His first one weighed 275-pounds.
Travis Gienger won last year’s contest, available only through a livestream because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Minnesota college horticulture teacher brought home a prize of $16,450 for a 2,350-pound pumpkin. It was the second heaviest pumpkin ever at the contest in its 48-year history, but the largest ever in North America grown that year. Joel Holland holds the record for largest-ever pumpkin at the festival at 2,363-pounds in 2017.
Monday’s weigh-off is usually accompanied by the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival, but for the second year in a row, it won’t be held after the City Council unanimously denied a permit for the Oct. 16 event.
When asked what he will do with the prize money, Uhlmeyer mentioned his four daughters and wife.
“I think we’ll have fun doing something,” he said.
