Des Moines Gourd Wins Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Contest

Farmer Don Young, center left, of Des Moines, Iowa, stands with his winning 1658-pound pumpkin at the Half Moon Bay 36th Annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, Calif. on Monday Oct. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels)

Holy Great Pumpkin, folks! That there on the left is one large gourd, eh? So much so, in fact, that it was awarded first prize at the annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. On Saturday, Don Young of Des Moines, Iowa, beat around 80 or so contenders with the 1,658-pound, 5-feet-4 tall monstrosity above.

Young landed a cool $10,000 in award money in addition to bragging rights. However, according to KTVU, "he fell just short in his efforts to beat the new world record of 1,725 set a week ago in Ohio."

When asked to spill his secret pumpkinn growing techniques, Young cited genetic tweaking. "'A lot of it is genetics ... It’s a lot like horse racing - we are breeding them, we are crossing them ... When you are trying to come up with a big pumpkin, you are taking a heavy pumpkin and crossing it with a long pumpkin to come up with a big, long pumpkin,'" he boasted.

Half Moon Bay, billed as "The World Pumpkin Capital," grows more than "3,000 tons of pumpkins ever year and shipping them around the world."