OREANDA-NEWS Alexander Chusov from Moscow grew a giant pumpkin weighing more than 800 kilograms and refused to consider it food. 

The Russian said that he became interested in growing giant vegetables in 2016, but came across only foreign records. "I started looking for information and realized that we still have such experience in Russia. Someone got a pumpkin for 60 kilograms — that was the maximum then. That's why I decided to try it myself," he explained.

Chusov engaged in agronomic experiments in an ordinary suburban cottage with a plot of six acres. On his first attempt, he managed to grow a pumpkin weighing more than 400 kilograms. "I wanted to get a very large fruit, so that later it could be put on public display. For me, this is not food, but an art object, an exhibit," the Russian said. This year, the "art object" he grew turned out to be more than twice as heavy as the first one.

According to preliminary measurements of Chusov, his pumpkin weighs 803 kilograms. However, the final weigh-in will take place on Sunday, September 15 at the annual giant vegetable show.

Chusov also refuted popular rumors that growing a huge pumpkin requires a large amount of nitrates. "Some people write that big pumpkins are stuffed with nitrates. But the fact is that if I overfeed my pumpkin with nitrogen, it will start to hurt, burst and rot," he explained.

At the moment, the world record for growing a giant pumpkin belongs to a farmer from the American state of Minnesota, Travis Ginger. In 2023, he submitted a fruit weighing 1,247 kilograms to the competition.

Earlier it was reported that the largest eggplant in the world was grown in the American state of Iowa. The fruit, grown by gardener Dave Bennett, weighed 3.78 kilograms.