The Biggest Pumpkin Ever Grown — And Other Ridiculous Pumpkin Records

Here at Blue Cottage Porch, we love pumpkins.

We grow them. We haul them across state lines. We clean them. We stack them on porches. We discuss their shapes and stems with far more enthusiasm than normal people probably should.

But apparently, we're amateurs.

Because somewhere along the way, people looked at the humble pumpkin and thought: You know what we should do with this? Make it weigh more than a car. Then hollow another one out and paddle it down a river.

And honestly? We respect that.

So in honor of people who have taken their love of pumpkins to completely unnecessary—and absolutely wonderful—levels, here are some of our favorite pumpkin world records.

The World's Heaviest Pumpkin: 2,819 Pounds

Let's start with the big guy. The current Guinness World Record holder for the heaviest pumpkin was grown by twin brothers Ian and Stuart Paton in the United Kingdom. In October 2025, their pumpkin tipped the scales at an astonishing 2,819 pounds, 4 ounces.

That's not a typo.

Image GuinessWorldRecords.com

The same pumpkin measured more than 21 feet around. The Paton brothers had been growing giant pumpkins for roughly 50 years before finally capturing the world record.

Which means somewhere in England, two brothers spent five decades looking at increasingly enormous pumpkins and saying, Not big enough.

We admire the commitment.

Someone Paddled a Pumpkin 58 Miles Down a River

This one raises an obvious question: Who was the first person to look at a giant pumpkin and think, "Boat"?

We don't have that answer.

What we do know is that Oregon giant-pumpkin grower Gary Kristensen currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest journey paddling a pumpkin boat. Yes, pumpkin boat is an official Guinness World Records category. In May 2025, Gary climbed inside a giant hollowed-out pumpkin he'd named Marchflower and paddled it 58.57 miles down the Columbia River.The trip took more than 20 hours.

And here's perhaps the best part: Gary had already held the record. In 2024, he'd traveled 45.67 miles in another pumpkin boat named Punky Loafster.Apparently 45 miles inside a vegetable wasn't enough. So he grew another one and went farther.

This is the kind of dedication that makes the rest of us feel like underachievers.

The World's Largest Pumpkin Pie Weighed 3,699 Pounds

At some point, giant pumpkins inevitably lead to giant pumpkin pie.

The Guinness World Record for the largest pumpkin pie belongs to the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio, who created a 3,699-pound pumpkin pie in 2010.

It measured 20 feet across. The crust alone required 440 sheets of dough. There was also canned pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, salt, cinnamon and pumpkin spice.

In other words, it was a completely normal pumpkin pie recipe except for the part where you could probably park a small car on it.

We have several questions about the oven.

The World's Heaviest Jack-o'-Lantern Was 2,749 Pounds

Remember Michael Jordan, that 2,749-pound former world-record pumpkin?

After winning the 2023 pumpkin weigh-off, they didn't just admire him. They carved him.

Artist Eric Jones turned the enormous pumpkin into a jack-o'-lantern, earning another Guinness World Record in the process. Before carving, Michael Jordan measured 21 feet, 1 inch around. For those of us who have struggled to cut the lid off a grocery-store pumpkin with a kitchen knife, we'd like a moment to appreciate the logistics involved here. This is less "pumpkin carving" and more "construction project."

Someone Once Fired a Pumpkin More Than a Mile

Naturally, humans weren't satisfied with growing enormous pumpkins, eating enormous pumpkins or paddling enormous pumpkins. We also needed to launch one.

A team in Utah set a Guinness World Record in 2010 by firing a pumpkin 5,545 feet using an air cannon appropriately named Big 10 Inch.

That's more than a mile.

We'd like to officially state that this is not one of the services offered by Blue Cottage Porch. Your pumpkins will remain safely on your porch.

And Then Someone Made a 2,281-Square-Foot Pumpkin Picture

In 2025, Sunnyfields Farm in Southampton, England, used black, white and orange pumpkins and squash to create a massive image of Ozzy Osbourne. The finished pumpkin mosaic covered 2,281 square feet, setting a Guinness World Record.

Image GuinessWorldRecords.com

This wasn't their first attempt, either. The farm had previously created a record-setting Jack Skellington display estimated to contain around 10,000 pumpkins. Suddenly, the number of pumpkins in your Blue Cottage Porch package seems extremely reasonable.

So What Have We Learned?

Mostly that if you give humans access to pumpkins, eventually someone is going to try to grow one bigger than a car, turn one into a boat, bake a pie the size of a room or shoot one into the distance.

At Blue Cottage Porch, our ambitions are slightly more modest. We bring our pumpkins down from our family's farm in Nebraska, clean them up, find the prettiest ones, and arrange them into beautiful fall displays for Houston-area homes.

We have no plans to paddle them down the Brazos River.

For now.