RHODE ISLAND MAN GROWS 3,156-POUND PUMPKIN, BREAKS WEEK LONG WORLD RECORD

Ron Wallace of Coventry, Rhode Island hauled a 3,156-pound pumpkin onto the scale at Frerichs Farm in Warren on October 10, and Guinness has now made it official. It is the heaviest pumpkin ever weighed and the first fruit of any kind to clear 3,000 pounds. Guinness called it a major milestone in the history of cultivation, which is a hell of a sentence to write about a squash. Spare a thought for Ian Paton. The British grower had his own record confirmed on October 3 at 2,856 pounds and change, with a pumpkin he named Bagheera that he watered with roughly 130 gallons a day and tended up to six hours daily. He got exactly one week on the throne before a 60-year-old from Rhode Island showed up and added about 300 pounds to the number. Wallace has done this before. He was the first grower past 1,500 pounds in 2006 and the first past 2,000 in 2012, so this is his third Guinness record in about 35 years of growing. What changed this year was a greenhouse, his first, plus what he described to Guinness as near-perfect weather. The seed was called a 2731 Stelts 2024, because at this level these guys name seeds like thoroughbreds and talk about them the same way.

Why you should give a shit: A man in a Rhode Island greenhouse just moved the ceiling on what a plant can physically do by 300 pounds in one afternoon, and the agriculture industry is already calling Wallace to ask how.