Lloydminster man sets Canada's pumpkin record

An Alberta man watched his pumpkin break the scale at the Smoky Lake Great White North Pumpkin Weigh-off and Fair last weekend, weighing in as the largest pumpkin ever grown in Canada.

Don Crews, a pumpkin grower from Lloydminster, won the 2022 weigh-off a pumpkin weighing in at 2,537 pounds.

“It felt pretty darn good,” said Crews, adding pumpkin growing is all about perfection.

“It's really, really hard to do. All you have to do is get your soil perfect, and get a bunch of good sunny days, and get lots of water on it, and train your vines and that's basically all it is, but getting all those things is hard.”

Crews has been attending the Smoky Lake Pumpkin Festival for two decades now and has been growing pumpkins for a little bit longer.

He said his love for growing pumpkins began when his wife came home with some seeds one day and he decided to plant them and grew a 50-pound pumpkin.

“I tried it again the next year and got some a little bigger and I said, `OK, I'm going to get a little more serious.' And then I got almost 200 pounds the third year,” he said.

“The next year I grew a 544pound pumpkin and I was hooked.”

Crews said he started growing this year's pumpkin in mid-april and took it out of the ground two days prior to the Oct. 1 weigh-off. He added that he's not trying to win the festival each year, he's just trying to improve on his pumpkin from the year before.

“It's like a mad scientist, just trying to figure it out and sometimes you end up growing something really big if you got it right,” he said.

Crews said his pumpkin this year measured at 226 inches in circumference and grew at a pace as high as 60 to 70 pounds per day during its peak growing time, adding he has to constantly manipulate the vines every one or two days as they continue to grow.

Pearl Bennett and her friend, Rosie Kruhlak, made the drive from Edmonton to Smoky Lake for the festival and Bennett said the 2,537-pound pumpkin was the “star of the show.”

“I never thought I'd be so excited watching the weighing of the pumpkins,” she said with a laugh.

“We were laughing at how tall it was, how big it was and it really was the star of the show, in my opinion.

Bennett said she is five-foottwo and was barely taller than the pumpkin. Crews said his pumpkin is at least four-foot-10.

“As each pumpkin comes out, it's a little bigger and it causes a little bit of disbelief. It's fun to watch the amazement on people's faces,” said Crews.