A teacher has grown a record breaking pumpkin weighing the same as 12 fully grown men.
Travis Gienger grew the massive 1,161kg gourd in his home town of Anoka, Minnesota, before transporting it across the US to a pumpkin growing competition in Northern California where his produce was certified.
The pumpkin broke the record for the heaviest ever in the US and won him $23,040 (£20,770) at the 2022 Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off.
It is the second time Gienger, a teacher at the local technical college, has won the competition. In 2020 he took home first place with a 1,066kg pumpkin.
Getting the legume to Half Moon Bay, California, was an epic journey in its own right.
Gienger wrote on Facebook : "It definitely wasn't the prettiest of loads, but after dropping it twice we are on our way! At 512" this will be the largest pumpkin west of the pond to ever hit a scale, the question is will it weigh it?
"I never thought I'd see the day where I had to use a 27,000 pound (12,247kg) forklift to load a vegetable."
Gienger nicknamed his pumpkin “Maverick” after it survived a bucket of dirt being dropped on it when it was still a baby gourd.
He said: “No one really thought it would make it. But it just healed up and came back.”
The runner up, Steve Daletas of Pleasant Hill, Oregon, submitted a 1,010kg pumpkin and received a $3,000 for his efforts.
Announcing Gienger's win, competition organisers described the winning vegetable as a "rhinoceros-sized mega-gourd".
The avid horticulturalist has been growing supersized pumpkins in his spare time for the last 28 years.
He told local paper KSTP : “I started way back in the day. My relatives all gardened, and my Dad would grow Big Mac pumpkins which were pretty decent in size. I just kind of caught on to it".
Despite the gourd's vast weight, Gienger didn't set a world record - only a US one.
According to the Guiness World Records, Italian man Stefano Cutrupi from Chianti, Tuscany, grew a 1,226kg monster.
It was weighed at the 10th Campionato della Zuccone pumpkin festival held in Peccioli, Italy, on September 26 2021.
Before you weep for Gienger, he does have a World Record under his belt already having taken his 2020 winning pumpkin and had it carved into the world's biggest jack o'lantern.
He enlisted the help fo his friend and experienced pumpkin carver Mike Rudolph who carved it into the "Tiger King" jack o'lantern for the local Halloween parade.
