Oak Hill, WV (WOAY) – A pumpkin that weighed more than 350 pounds took top prize at this year’s Oak Leaf Festival giant pumpkin contest, and the man who judged it wants the competition to keep growing.
The winner tipped the scale at 356 pounds. It was grown by Jerry Cook. Contest judge Ryan Cook, who sits on the Oak Leaf Festival Committee, says the pumpkin came in heavier than its own measurement predicted.
“It measured 308. But when we weighed it, it was 356,” Cook said. “So that is over chart. So it’s actually bigger than what it measured.”
Cook says growing a giant is part science and part obsession, and it starts with finding the right seed.
“You can’t go to the store and buy these seeds. You have to get seeds from a giant pumpkin grower,” he said. “There’s nothing special about the seeds other than their genetics.”
All that effort produces a pumpkin that looks like a season’s worth of pie filling. Cook says looks can be deceiving.
“Well, it would be a lot of pumpkin pie, except for the fact that the sugar content in that pumpkin is not high enough to make pumpkin pie out of,” he said. “So it would taste very bad.”
The champions may not go into an oven, but they can pay off. Cook says a giant pumpkin can sell for a dollar a pound or more for growers who know where to look.
“A lot of people like myself, we sell them to Dollywood and places like that, on the stipulation we get our seeds back because that’s the most important thing,” Cook said.
Getting a pumpkin that heavy off the vine and onto a scale is rarely a one-person job, and Cook says the crew of neighbors it takes is the part he enjoys most.
“It brings the community together and it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “Everybody around, they might not want to grow the pumpkin, but they want to know about the pumpkin.”
The contest is still young. Cook says last year’s entries topped out near 80 pounds. This year the field added two hundred-pound pumpkins and the 356-pound winner. The prize for now is a single trophy, but Cook is thinking bigger.
“As we grow, I want to get it to where we can start paying out first through third and maybe first through tenth, and be able to pay people for their hard work,” he said.
Cook believes more growers will get hooked once they see how fast the pumpkins take off.
“Once you see that pumpkin go from basketball size, when you get in at nighttime and you come back out the next morning, it’s beachball size and you see it exploding like that, it’s really hard not to get hooked,” he said.
When the Oak Leaf Festival returns next fall, Cook hopes to see the contest grow as much as the pumpkins.
“If you get a chance to grow pumpkin next year, grow it and bring it so we can show it off to all the people that come to the Oak Leaf Festival,” he said.
Cook says the giants usually stay on display through the season. When it ends, growers harvest the seeds to share with anyone ready to try their hand next year.
