<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0tFUlG_0wBndFqL00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0tFUlG_0wBndFqL00" width="1440" height="1080" ><figcaption>Great pumpkin Jim Sherwood with his award-winning giant pumpkin, which weighed 2,453 pounds. (Courtesy of Jim Sherwood/Courtesy of Jim Sherwood)</figcaption></figure>After decades of competitively growing giant pumpkins, Jim Sherwood of Mulino finally notched a first-place win at this year’s National Pumpkin Weigh Off last month in Wheatland, California. His monstrous pumpkin, nicknamed Hank the Tank, weighed 2,453 pounds and was about 18 feet in circumference. It was the 10th largest pumpkin grown in the world this year, and a personal best for Sherwood, a retired arborist who first got into competitive pumpkin growing in 2000.At the time, a man who was working for Sherwood asked for help picking pumpkins in his garden. “I thought that was an innocent enough request, and so I follow him home one afternoon, and he’s got this garden full of 900-pound giant pumpkins,” Sherwood said. “I had never seen one before in my entire life, and I was basically hooked right after that.”Competitive pumpkin contests happen across the globe, overseen by a regulating body called the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. Despite the name, the group sets competition standards for a variety of oversized fruits and vegetables. Gardeners compete with giant tomatoes, watermelons and squash, but nothing compares to the spectacle of the giant pumpkins. In 1979, a Canadian grower named Howard Dill, known as the “Pumpkin King,” developed the Atlantic giant pumpkin. Earlier pumpkin varieties had topped out around 500 pounds, but the Atlantic giants have grown to five times that weight, kicking off the craze of giant pumpkin contests. “It now has grown into to a worldwide phenomenon where we have thousands of growers around the world that do this,” said Sherwood, who himself is in the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth Hall of Fame.The first pumpkin to exceed 1,000 pounds was grown in 1996. The current World Record-holding pumpkin was 2,749 pounds, grown in 2023 by Travis Gienger of Minnesota. The next great leap in the giant pumpkin arms race will be growing the world’s first 3,000-pounder. About 125 giant pumpkin contests are held annually across the U.S., Canada and Europe, Sherwood said, but the National Pumpkin Weigh Off offers the largest cash prize. First prize claims $9 per pound, which means Sherwood took home $22,077 for this year’s win. <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3P2IEQ_0wBndFqL00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3P2IEQ_0wBndFqL00" width="1440" height="1080" ><figcaption>Great pumpkin Jim Sherwood with his award-winning giant pumpkin, which weighed 2,453 pounds. (Courtesy of Jim Sherwood/Courtesy of Jim Sherwood)</figcaption></figure>Oregon hosts two weigh-offs each year: At Bauman Farms in Gervais the first Saturday in October, and the Terminator Weigh Off, happening this Saturday. The event is so named because it’s the world’s last pumpkin weigh-off of the season. Sherwood, as a member of the Pacific Giant Vegetable Growers, will be emcee.The Terminator pumpkins will be carved up, turned into boats and raced across Tualatin’s Lake at the Commons for Sunday’s West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta.Atlantic giant pumpkins were created specifically for size, and they don’t make for great eating. The question of what to do with the pumpkins post-competition is what birthed Tualatin’s Pumpkin Regatta. “We tried to figure out what can we do with these pumpkins at the end of the year rather than just taking them home and pulling out the seeds and then throwing them on the compost,” Sherwood said. “A couple other clubs had been doing these little regional regattas, and we thought, well, why don’t we have ours?”When the event began, it primarily consisted of pumpkin growers, their families and a few onlookers. Today, the Pumpkin Regatta draws tens of thousands of people to Tualatin to watch the races and attend the Pumpkin Festival, where people can try pumpkin bowling and pumpkin golf and watch professional pumpkin carvers work their magic.Regatta pumpkins typically weigh in around 700 pounds, which is apparently the sweet spot for a pumpkin boat.“We’ve had nearly a 2,000-pound pumpkin in the regatta, but needless to say, that’d be like paddling a barge,” Sherwood said. Hank the Tank was far too large to paddle. After the California competition, the pumpkin returned home to Clackamas County — in a specially designed padded trailer — where the giant sat under a tarp waiting for Sherwood to harvest its seeds. The carving up of a great pumpkin is always emotional. “Oh, you have no idea,” Sherwood said. He had planned to carve 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 whole another week before finally succumbing to the knife — but the great pumpkin will live on. Its seeds will be used to grow Sherwood’s next generation of super-pumpkin in the spring. — Samantha Swindler covers features for The Oregonian/OregonLive and Here is Oregon. Reach her at sswindler@oregonian.com.Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.</div></body>

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Final 2024 giant pumpkin contest comes to Tualatin on Saturday. Oregon's national champ will be there

After decades of competitively growing giant pumpkins, Jim Sherwood of Mulino finally notched a first-place win at this year’s National Pumpkin Weigh Off last month in Wheatland, California. His monstrous pumpkin, nicknamed Hank the Tank, weighed 2,453 pounds and was about 18 feet in circumference. It was the 10th...