502 Pound Pumpkin Draws Crowds In Brooklyn
NEW YORK (CBS 2/ AP) -- Even Charlie Brown would have to admit that this is one great pumpkin.
A homegrown 502 pound pumpkin is attracting a lot of attention and a fair number of skeptics in the Kensington section of Brooklyn.
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But this is no Halloween trick -- the pumpkin is 100 percent real.
"Nobody believes it's real," Dawn Zambito said. "So my son made that sign over there saying it's real and not to bang it because people stick their nails and keys in to make sure it's real."
The Zambito family grew their colossal pumpkin upstate -- but it's not the largest pumpkin around.
Guinness World Records has confirmed that a massive pumpkin grown in Wisconsin is officially the world's heaviest.
The gourd grown this year by Chris Stevens of New Richmond tips the scales at 1,810.5 pounds. That's 85 pounds heavier than the previous record, a 1,725-pound pumpkin grown last year in Ohio.
Stevens' pumpkin has a circumference of 186.5 inches, or more than 15 feet. When turned on its side, the pumpkin is more than waist-high to an average-size person.
Stevens unveiled his pumpkin earlier this month at the Stillwater Harvest Fest in Minnesota. He said at the time his secret is a precise mixture of sunshine, rain, cow manure, fish emulsion and seaweed.
"It takes luck. It takes good seed. It takes good soil," Stevens said on Thursday in New York.
His pumpkin will be on public display from Friday at the Bronx Botanical Gardens through to Halloween.
Stevens transported his pumpkin from his farm, driving slowly the whole way because he was afraid a sudden stop could send the nearly one-ton pumpkin crashing into the cab of his truck.
