Twin brothers Ian and Stuart Paton have spent 50 years honing their craft in a shared love of gardening. And all that hard work paid off, as together the UK-based brothers grew five of the 10 heaviest pumpkins in the world, earning themselves 10 European championships and three world titles. Obviously, their efforts have been fruitful. But could one brother achieve the same heights in pumpkin heft on his own? Such was the existential question weighing heaving on Ian’s head this summer, when Stuart up and left him high and dry (during a record heatwave-plagued UK summer), for a new pedestrian hobby of “traveling the world.” It was a dirty business of toil in the soil, but Ian proved victorious! With his own two hands, Ian grew the world’s heaviest pumpkin, at a whopping 2,773.39 lbs. Oh my gourd!

Ian Paton, who used to grow the fruit with his brother before going solo, said he was “super happy” after producing the 1,257.99kg, or 198st gourd.

Mr Paton’s feat came despite the summer heatwaves taking their toll on growing conditions in the build-up to Halloween.

His effort was no fluke. He has grown the world’s three heaviest pumpkins on record, and is “especially happy” he beat rivals from the US to the title.

The result was all the more rewarding for being the 65-year-old’s first year of growing on his own after Stuart Paton, his twin, hung up his gardening gloves to travel the world.

“It’s good to have achieved it without my brother because it was an immense amount of work,” said Mr Paton, from Lymington, Hampshire. “It’s five or six hours of work every day for two months.

“It’s nice to know I can do it myself. A lot of that work is burying the vines so it gets more roots – that’s where the size comes from. The pumpkin grows about a foot and a half or 40cm a day in every direction so it starts to get to be a lot.”

…But despite losing his brother to wanderlust, Mr Paton said his granddaughters, Etta, five, and Martha Syrett, seven, had been a great help.

He said: “The grandkids were amazed. I put it on a WhatsApp call to them when I won and you could hear them shouting down the phone.”

Mr Paton said that he knew the pumpkin was a winner the moment the telehandler “lit up like a Christmas tree because it was too heavy”.

“Someone Googled it and said it’s the size of a female hippo,” he said.

“Between Stuart and myself, we have got five out of the top-10 heaviest pumpkins in the world. But now I have grown the top one, two and three in the world. That feels really good.

“It feels especially good knowing the Americans haven’t got it. I have a lot of friends there who grow pumpkins. It’s a very friendly sport and everyone works together, so it’s not like other sports.”

[From The Telegraph]

A healthy, hearty congratulations to Ian Paton. Stuart may have jaunted off to go see the world, but Ian stayed home and grew a squash the size of the world in his own backyard. (Sidenote: why yes of course, I definitely knew well before reading this article that pumpkins are fruit, botanically speaking, and are only considered vegetables from a culinary perspective due to their taste profile leaning more savory than sweet. This was NOT NEWS to me!) For anyone having trouble visualizing a pumpkin the size of a female hippo, check out The Telegraph’s fabulous snap of Ian’s five-year-old granddaughter lying beside the behemoth. As my grandmother would say, it’s a gezunt! And not that I’m a partaker myself, but I must ask on behalf of the hordes celebrating the fall harvest season: how many Pumpkin Spice Lattes could that baby yield?! Good grief — how big would Cinderella’s carriage be if it were bippity-boppity-booped from that sucker?!!

PS — CBS News had a cute story this week about a 13-year-old kid growing a 500-pound pumpkin from seeds his grandmother gave him for Christmas. Sure, it’s only a fraction of Ian’s pumpkin, but it’s still mighty impressive!

PPS — “It feels especially good knowing the Americans haven’t got it.” I’m cracking up over that line, and I say that as an American. Then I continued laughing when Ian said one sentence later, “It’s a very friendly sport.”

Photo note by CB: Here are the twins in 2016 at ‘The annual Netley pumpkin competition near Southampton in Hampshire’ where they broke the British pumpkin record. The prize-winning pumpkin from 2026 is also shown. Credit: Jules Annan/Avalon, Look Press Agency/Look Press/Avalon