FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — Growing a record pumpkin isn’t for everyone, but Joe Morgan found out it is for him.
He grew a pumpkin that weighed 1,808.5 pounds, obliterating the Minnesota State Fair’s old record of 1,676.5 pounds set in 2022.
Morgan, who is a union insulator, didn’t start out as a master gardener.
“COVID hit and I always wanted to grow a big pumpkin,” said Morgan.
So, he decided to give it a go. That's when he discovered growing a massive pumpkin takes a lot more time and energy than he thought.
“My wife does call it ‘the other woman,’” said Morgan.
It took 75 days to grow his pumpkin, and on a typical day, he said he spent two hours tending to it after work. He'd also sometimes put in six to eight hours on a Saturday.
“More can go wrong than right,” explained Morgan. He needed to protect it from weather and insects and take extra care in trimming, feeding and watering.
Morgan said he knew early on this pumpkin was something special. At one time, it was growing more than 40 pounds a day. It was still averaging 20 pounds a day just before he cut it. It could have grown even larger with more time, but Morgan said, “I really wanted the state fair first-place ribbon.”
What he got was a record.
“It was awesome. It was unbelievable. I just went kind of crazy for a little bit,” said Morgan.
He began growing pumpkins five years ago, not on a farm but in a backyard in St. Anthony Village. In the beginning, Morgan said he couldn’t get them to break 100 pounds, so he enlisted the help of Chris Brown, creator of the “Garden of Giants” Facebook group.
Brown knows his stuff. He holds the 2021 Guinness World Records title for heaviest butternut squash at 55.5 pounds and broke a new Minnesota State Fair record just this year for his 5.02-pound eggplant.
“I help people out all around the world,” said Brown. He told us he holds Minnesota state records for the heaviest tomato at 9.06 pounds, the tallest sunflower at over 20 feet, the widest sunflower head at 32 inches and the largest bushel gourd at 331 pounds.
And that’s all in the last seven years.
Brown said he first got hooked when he saw the giant vegetables at, you guessed it, the state fair.
“Why can’t I do this?” he asked.
Brown, just like Morgan, said he soon found there’s an art to growing produce that big. He says you need good soil, good technique and genetically superior seeds.
Morgan’s super seed came from Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher from Anoka, Minnesota, who set a new world record just last year with a gourd weighing a whopping 2,749 pounds. Morgan’s seed didn’t come from that gourd but from another of Gienger’s pumpkins called “Godzilla.”
While not everyone can grow these monster fruits and vegetables, you can enjoy looking at them for the full run of the Minnesota State Fair.
The exhibit is in the Agriculture Horticulture Building, located between Carnes and Judson Avenues and Underwood and Cooper Streets.