King Pumpkin Comes in at 1,837 Pounds
The trucks started lining up along North Chestnut Street long before the 6 p.m. Barnesville Pumpkin Festival weigh-off launch Wednesday night.
The line stretched more than a block for the next two and a half hours with the last entries hailing from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia making it to the scales by 8:45 p.m.
When John Rataiczak, the “voice of the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival”, counted down the last seconds to the 9 p.m. deadline, the winner of the 2026 King Pumpkin was a 1,837 lb. entry by last year’s third place winner Jerry Rose, Jr. of Huntsburg, Ohio.
The win was Rose’s third crown. The Geauga County grower won the 1993 and 1994 competitions with 673.5 – and 590 – pound entries.
During the evening, the weigh-off was webcast live thanks to the great work of Barnesville’s John Burkhart and his team of JB Digital Media. The webcast is a service of the Belmont County tourism council. Near the end of the competition, Rataiczak asked the over 700 viewers where they were located. Viewers from more than dozen states chimed in including one from Honolulu, Hawaii.
In a joint interview with WTOV-TV, Barnesville News and The Times Leader, Rose said,
“We start growing them in the beginning of mid-April. We put them outside at the end of April, beginning of May, and there’s a lot of babying, fertilizing, watering, and just meticulous care throughout the summer.”
“I just love gardening in general, watching things that can grow 50 pounds a day and to just be able to watch something grow that fast is amazing,” Rose said. “This one came on the plant on June 29.”
Rose grew the champion in a plastic covered greenhouse while most growers raise pumpkins outside.
“Growing in the greenhouse without heat raises the temperature about three degrees, even with the rain, still watering every day,” Rose shared in an interview with Rataiczak.
On July 4, a microburst at Huntsburg lifted all the plastic on the greenhouse, but all Rose’s pumpkins were undamaged.
While there were over 30 entries in the competition, all growers said the almost constant rain made this a difficult year from getting the blooms to set to warding off mold and rot.
Five-time champion grower, Bill Neptune of New Concord, said his field was flooded twice. He brought his only remaining pumpkin. Coming up short with a fifth place finish, his entry tipped the scales at 1,232 pounds.
“Even with a canopy over the pumpkin, it just sat there for the past five weeks, gaining no weight,” Neptune said.
Neptune’s entry from Guernsey County was the largest in the original five-county competition winning him the coveted Martin Schumacher trophy.
Giant pumpkins were hauled to Barnesville in trailers and trucks from Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. ©Barnesville Area News Company Photo
Rose received a check for $3,674 along with the championship trophy.
Second place was claimed by Adam Momivov of East Canton, Ohio, with a pumpkin weighing 1,830. He received $2,000.
Third place winner was Lance Croyle of Portersville, Ohio, whose pumpkin weighed 1,756 and won $1,250.
The Pumpkin festival officially launches tonight at 5 p.m. Becky Carpenter Hunkler, the event’s first queen when the festival moved downtown from the Catholic Church in 1968, will cut the ribbon.
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