After winning heaviest pumpkin contest, B.C. man wants to grow even bigger gourd

Leif Palmberg, Anik Mommsen-Smith and their son Victor pose with their champion giant pumpkin. (Courtesy: Leif Palmberg)

A gargantuan gourd that made the journey from the Southern Gulf Islands to the Lower Mainland was crowned the winner of B.C.’s annual Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off Competition.

The heavyweight champion, a giant Atlantic pumpkin, weighed in at a hefty 1,758 pounds on Saturday, edging out the second-place fruit by 132 pounds.

The honours went to a first-time giant pumpkin grower, Leif Palmberg of Galiano Island.

Palmberg told CTV News he randomly came across a social media page for backyard giant pumpkin growers, and thought a modest 500-pound pumpkin would impress his two-year-old son.

But once he committed to buying the seeds, the rookie decided to go big or go home.

“I was like, why only try to grow a 500-pounder? If I’m actually going through the effort of growing this thing, I may as well try to grow a giant,” he said.

Now, growing a massive pumpkin is an equally monumental effort. Preparing the perfect soil required two dump trucks worth of manure, which composted over the winter, worked into the dirt three feet deep over a 1,000 square-foot pumpkin patch, Palmberg explained.

He germinated the seed in April, planted it outside in May, and kept it under a greenhouse for a month, which had to be removed each morning. Including time spent watering the precious pumpkin by hand, Palmberg estimates he put about an hour a day of work into the prize-winner.

Palmberg added his toddler, Victor, had a lot of fun joining his dad in the garden over the summer.

When it was finally time to show the pumpkin off, Palmberg had to use an excavator and slings to hoist the gourd into the back of his truck. The family, including three French bulldogs, made the ferry journey from Galiano Island to Krause Berry Farms in Langley with the soon-to-be-champion in tow.

“Everybody’s giving you funny looks,” Palmberg said. “The highway was the best part. Going down the highway, people are just passing, giving you the funniest looks. People are all pretty stoked about it.”

Ironically, when the family arrived at the competition, it wasn’t all the other huge pumpkins that caught Victor’s eye, but the smallest ones.

“He wasn’t that interested in all the big pumpkins. Right away, he goes and looks over at all the tiny little ones,” Palmberg recalled. “He wants to bring me over to show me all the tiny little ones; he thought they were awesome.”

And when Palmberg’s wife asked their son if he was happy their pumpkin was the biggest, the little boy replied yes, “because Daddy really wanted that.”

“That was funny,” Palmberg remembered. “It seems like he just really wanted it more for me.”

The prize pumpkin now lives in a shipping container, where it will hopefully stay in good enough shape until Halloween so it can be displayed at the local Lions Club’s annual party.

In the meantime, Palmberg has his sights set on growing an even bigger pumpkin next time.

“I know I left a lot on the table where I could have gotten this thing a lot bigger. Genetically, I didn’t take the pumpkin to its max, you know, it was capable of a lot more,” he said.

“I thought it was awesome growing a pumpkin its size, but next time around I would like to be well above that 2,000-pound mark.”

And if you want to try your hand at growing a giant pumpkin, Palmberg recommends purchasing seeds from other competition growers through the organization Giant Pumpkins British Columbia.