The final giant pumpkin competition of 2024 will be held Saturday in Tualatin. Oregon's national champion will be there – This is Oregon

After decades of competitively growing giant pumpkins, Jim Sherwood of Mulino finally took first place last month at this year's National Pumpkin Weigh Off in Wheatland, California.

His monstrous pumpkin, nicknamed “Hank the Tank,” weighed 2,453 pounds and measured about 18 feet in circumference.

It was the 10th-largest pumpkin grown worldwide that year and a personal best for Sherwood, a retired arborist who first began growing pumpkins competitively in 2000.

At that time, a man who worked for Sherwood asked for help picking pumpkins in his garden.

“I thought it was a harmless request, so I follow him home one afternoon and he has this garden full of 900-pound giant pumpkins,” Sherwood said. “I had never seen one in my life and I was immediately hooked.”

Pumpkin competitions take place around the world and are overseen by a regulatory body called the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. Despite the name, the group sets competitive standards for a variety of oversized fruits and vegetables.

Gardeners compete with giant tomatoes, watermelons and pumpkins, but nothing compares to the spectacle of giant pumpkins. In 1979, a Canadian breeder named Howard Dill, known as the “Pumpkin King,” developed the Atlantic giant pumpkin. Previous pumpkin varieties weighed about 500 pounds, but the Atlantic giants have grown to five times that size, sparking the hype of giant pumpkin competitions.

“It has now become a worldwide phenomenon where we have thousands of growers around the world doing this,” said Sherwood, who is himself in the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth Hall of Fame.

The first pumpkin to weigh over 1,000 pounds was grown in 1996. The current world record pumpkin weighed 2,749 pounds and was grown in 2023 by Travis Gienger of Minnesota.

The next big leap in the giant pumpkin arms race will be growing the world's first 3,000-pounder.

Sherwood said there are about 125 giant pumpkin competitions held each year in the U.S., Canada and Europe, but the National Pumpkin Weigh Off offers the largest cash prize. First prize is $9 per pound, meaning Sherwood took home $22,077 for this year's win.

Oregon hosts two weigh-ins each year: the first Saturday in October at Bauman Farms in Gervais and the Terminator weigh-in this Saturday. The event is so named because it is the world's last pumpkin weigh-in of the season. As a member of the Pacific Giant Plant Growers, Sherwood will serve as moderator.

The Terminator pumpkins will be dismantled, turned into boats and raced across Tualatin's Lake at the Commons on Sunday at the West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta.

Giant Atlantic pumpkins are specifically made for their size and are not particularly good for eating. The question of what to do with the pumpkins after the competition was the impetus for the Tualatin Pumpkin Regatta.

“We've been trying to figure out what we can do with these pumpkins at the end of the year instead of just taking them home, ripping out the seeds and then throwing them in the compost,” Sherwood said. “A few other clubs had been running these little regional regattas and we thought, why not run our own?”

When the event began, it consisted mostly of pumpkin farmers, their families and a few onlookers. Today, the Pumpkin Regatta draws tens of thousands of people to Tualatin to watch the racing and attend the Pumpkin Festival, where you can try pumpkin bowling, pumpkin golf, and watch professional pumpkin carvers at work.

Racing pumpkins typically weigh around 700 pounds, which appears to be the optimal weight for a pumpkin boat.

“We had an almost 2,000-pound pumpkin at the regatta, but of course that would be like paddling on a barge,” Sherwood said.

Hank the Tank was way too big to paddle. After the California competition, the pumpkin returned to Clackamas County in a specially designed padded trailer, where the giant sat under a tarp and waited for Sherwood to harvest its seeds. Cutting up a great pumpkin is always emotional.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Sherwood said. He had planned to cut up the pumpkin last week. “I couldn't do it. I had the saw out and everything, and I just couldn't do it. You get so emotionally attached to these silly things.”

Hank the Tank remained healthy for another week before finally succumbing to the knife – but the great pumpkin will live on. Sherwood's next generation of super pumpkins will grow from its seeds in the spring.

—Samantha Swindler reports features for The Oregonian/OregonLive and This is Oregon. Reach them at [email protected].

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