Oh my gourd! Grower’s enormous pumpkin squashes the competition at Elk Grove festival

In April, Jose Ceja put a $700 pumpkin seed in the dirt and hoped for the best.

Drought worried him. Blistering summer heat slowed his squash’s growth.

But on Saturday, Ceja’s enormous pale-orange produce tipped the scales at 1,886 pounds, earning him a $7,000 payday and bragging rights, once again, in the world of competitive pumpkin growers.

Go big or gourd home, as it went Saturday at the annual Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin Festival.

The Napa-area man who owns a septic tank company is no stranger to success at the festival, a go-to spot for 28 years for growers of ginormous squash. He set the festival’s pumpkin record in 2018 with a 2,138-pounder — a mark that still stands.

No two years are exactly the same, though, Ceja, 57, said, in the run-up to Saturday’s weigh-in. A good seed matters a lot, he said. So does the ability to put in the work.

The most important ingredient?

“A lot of luck,” he said.

Ceja’s grandfather introduced him to growing vegetables, and he started growing radishes of his own long before pumpkins came into the picture. Then, 22 years ago, his father-in-law gave him a seed. He told Ceja it was for a giant pumpkin.

“I thought he was pulling my leg,” Ceja said. “I put it in the ground and my first pumpkin weighed 599 pounds.”

Tending to a massive pumpkin tacks on hours to his days, he said, ensuring the overhead sprinklers are working just so and the roots are drawing all the nutrients possible. It’s time well spent in the close-knit community of competitive gourd growing.

Watching curious spectators gawk is an added bonus.

“Those people, they have a smile because we did something for half of the year,” Ceja said, gesturing toward the 100-or-so people in the bleachers and lining the railings by the vehicle-sized fruits. “That to me has a lot of value.”

Through the afternoon Saturday, kids barely old enough to walk and couples who have come to the festival for years gawked at the gourds, snapping photos and trying to capture their size.

“They’re humongous!” said 8-year-old Brooke Silva. “I didn’t know they could get so big.”

It takes roughly five months for giant pumpkins to go from seed to contest weigh-in. At their peak, pumpkins pack on 30 pounds a day. Growers strategize the best ways to water them, how to tend to their roots and — when the time is right — how to harvest them and haul them to the showdown.

Ceja’s weigh-in caused the crowd to roar.

Impressive as it was, it was 800 pounds short of the world record set last year in Germany. That grower, Italy’s Stefano Cutrupi, showed up with a 2,702.9 pound fruit — a pumpkin that weighed about as much as a Toyota Corolla.

Competitive pumpkins have been an autumn fixture for decades, but their size has grown exponentially of late. A 400-pound pumpkin was on display at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. Nearly a century passed before pumpkins tipped the scales at 1,000 pounds.

The race was on after that.

World records have been set in seven of the past 11 years, according to the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, a group that has been dubbed the “Olympic Organizing Committee of competitive vegetable growing.”

Saturday’s festival in Elk Grove was an official weigh-off for the international contest. There are clubs for giant gourd growers. Some refer to giant pumpkin growing as an “exciting sport,” though most, including Ceja, call it an obscure eyebrow-raising hobby.

With the season’s competition over, Ceja said his pumpkin would go on display at a Napa-area winery. And when the gourd begins to fade? He’ll harvest the seeds, dry them and send some to fellow growers he’s met around the world.

He’ll keep some for himself, too. That way he can try his luck again.

There’s another item on the to-do list, too.

“Next,” Ceja said, “is going to be clearing my patch and getting ready for next year.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2022 at 6:00 AM.