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WATCH: The heavy smoke drifting from wildfires in B.C. this summer put a damper on all kinds of things in the Calgary area. As Gil Tucker shows us, for one very dedicated pumpkin grower, it might have blocked out a good shot at a world record – Oct 10, 2018
Eddie Zaychkowsky has been growing pumpkins on his rural property northeast of Calgary for almost two decades, but never anything quite like the giant surprise the summer of 2018 brought.
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“[It’s] 2,255 pounds,” Zaychkowsky said, showing off his proudest achievement in the pumpkin patch. “It’s the biggest one ever grown in Canada. We had days of over 60 pounds in a 24-hour period that this thing gained.”
Zaychkowsky figures it might have grown even bigger if Alberta hadn’t been hit by heavy smoke drifting over from summer wildfires in British Columbia.
“We ran into a snag at the beginning of August when all the forest fires hit because it took away the sun,” he said. “We were running at [gains of] 40 pounds a day and it dropped to six.”
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“We might have given the world record a run [of] 2,624 pounds, grown in Belgium three years ago,” Zaychkowsky said. “We were on track to beat it.”
And while the scale shows it’s the biggest pumpkin ever grown in Canada, it won’t earn Zaychkowsky a national record.
“There was a hole [in it] about the size of a knitting needle,” he said. “That’s what disqualified it.”
But Zaychkowsky’s giant gourd is still getting pumpkin people pretty pumped.
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“We already have a waiting list of people that want these seeds,” he said. “From New Zealand to England to Australia.”