Don Crews of Lloydminster set a new Canadian record at this year’s Great White North Pumpkin Fair in Smoky Lake, Alta.
It was definitely a great pumpkin.
Don Crews of Lloydminster, Alta., set a new Canadian record last month by growing a gourd weighing 2,537 pounds. Crews said he started the pumpkin in mid-April and it pollinated June 16.
“It already had 14 or 15 feet of vine by then and I set back to just one (vine). I cut back early. I want to find that good one right away,” he said.
It’s a challenge to grow a big pumpkin and there are other challenges along the way, not least of which is getting it to the competition in one piece.
“There are so many things to think about when you are growing it. You have to make your vine a little ‘s’ curve. The pumpkin pushes back, and if you don’t allow for that, it will strip itself off the vine, especially if you have an odd-shaped pumpkin.
“If you have an odd shape where the stem end goes up, now you’ve got real problems with vine management. You might have to be pushing the pumpkin down or pulling the pumpkin back and forth. I got lucky with this one, I had a normal shape.
“I start on a piece of plywood with a couple pieces of Styrofoam on it, and I figured about where to have the pumpkin on that.”
Crews is an experienced pumpkin grower and a major enthusiast with successes and failures in his gourd-growing past.
But this year was different.
“I knew for the last month or so that this thing is starting to get out of hand (in size),” he said.
His first attempt to raise the pallet on which the pumpkin sat, with his skid steer loader, raised the back of the loader into the air. He had to use an older forklift to get his monster pumpkin into a trailer for the trip to Smoky Lake.
Crews has been bringing pumpkins, squash and watermelons to the Great White North Pumpkin Fair at Smoky Lake since 2001, and has taken the championship for the heaviest pumpkin 10 times, including this year.
He first won in 2006 with an 1,884-lb. pumpkin and has broken the site record several times over the years.
The pumpkin fair was on hiatus in 2020 and 2021, and in the latter year, the Canadian record was set by a father and daughter team, Jim and Kelsey Bryson of Ormstown, Que., with a pumpkin checking in at 2,006.5 lb.
The world record, according to the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, was set in 2001 when Stefano Cutrupi of Tuscany, Italy, had a pumpkin weighing 2,702 lb., just 165 pounds more than Crews’ pumpkin this year.
The largest pumpkin recorded worldwide this year was grown by Ian and Stuart Paton of Lymington, England, at 2,656.1 lb.
