Dave Stelts of Enon Valley, Pa., waves to his cousin, Maria, in the crowd following his pumpkin's weighing at Saturday's 29th annual World Record Giant Pumpkin Weigh-off in Canfield. Stelts' winning pumpkin weighed in at 2,376.5 pounds. (Correspondent photo / Brandon Cantwell)

CANFIELD — For Dave Stelts of Enon Valley, Pa., pumpkin growing has always been part of his life.

“My grandfather and my dad were avid gardeners. My dad always sat there and, you know, he’d grow pumpkins,” Stelts said. “The state fair used to have a pumpkin tent, and we’d always go there. I think it was in the ’70s, and we’d grow a 131-pound pumpkin and won.”

Saturday’s win at the Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers’ 29th annual World Record Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off marked a seventh win at the competition for him in an event that featured seven other pumpkins weighing more than 2,000 pounds.

“We weren’t where we quite wanted to be until today. Our previous personal best was 2,342 pounds,” Stelts said. “Today we got 2,376.5. So it’s a very fulfilling day.”

Stelts noted that a lot of effort, time and love goes into growing such pumpkins.

“It’s a lot of stuff. To get into it, growing large pumpkins is more of a labor of love,” he said. “I mean, it’s definitely a lot of time out in the garden, it takes a lot of specific things — nutrient levels and good gardening. You know, we like the Walt’s Organic Wonder products, they give us the organics that we need to make a patch thrive and grow extraordinarily large pumpkins. And with 10 over 2,000 pounds the last two years, it does great.

“You want to just be good to your soils by composting, building up carbon in the soil and just watch your levels. We’re constantly testing soil, tissue tests and disease,” Stelts later added. “Seeing, identifying, then learning how to fix those problems.”

Stelts added that it’s crazy to see how the hobby has grown. They set a world record in 2000 with 1,140 pounds, something that has been broken multiple times since then.

Tim Parks is the owner of Parks Garden Center and site coordinator for the Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers, and he explained that the event began because while they would prepare for and show their pumpkins at the fair, there was still more growing left to be done.

“We all would go to the fair on Labor Day every year and show our pumpkins and that would be the end of the season, but there was a lot of growing left to be done and these guys wanted to compete and there were other weighoffs across the country already happening later,” Parks said. “So that’s when I decided at Parks Garden Center here, I wanted to get on board and apply for this weightoff site for the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. Then I got five guys involved from the community here to form a club and went ahead from there. We did seminars, newsletters, you know, it came about from wanting to be really small and simple and it developed into this one massive organization.”

Parks added that the $20,000 in prize money comes from a wide variety of sources.

“All the growers donate 100 seeds from their pumpkins and then the club has a seed sale, so that helps to generate a lot of the money that we give away. And then we also have dues for the (organization) membership. I think we’re a couple of hundred members worldwide and then we also have more and more local sponsors,” Parks said. “Becoming involved and these people, it might not even directly come back to them in the form of dollars in their business, but they want to be a part of the nice community event and kind of gets everybody excited. So it’s great to have the local support that way too.”

Aspiring winners will pay hundreds for a single seed, even if it isn’t guaranteed to produce.

Parks said it isn’t uncommon for a seed, such as the one that grew to a world record size in Italy two years ago, to sell for $600 a seed.

As for where the pumpkins end up after competition, Parks said they go to a variety of places.

“Usually there’s some guys that do promotions and facilitate that and they’ll go around and buy these pumpkins up and they’ll take them to amusement parks,” he said. “Museums, casinos, television programs, so they all end up at some other festivals.”