See 30,000 pounds of jack-o'-lanterns at Pittsburgh Monster Pumpkins display
The champion pumpkin weighs 2,111.5 pounds.
An Atlantic Giant, this breed of pumpkin will be part of the orange mass at the Pittsburgh Monster Pumpkins Pop-Up Festival on Pittsburgh’s North Shore.
The Halloween-inspired event opens Friday and runs through Nov. 5.
Because of the pandemic, it will be a drive-by display along West General Robinson Street in Gold Lot 1, across from Heinz Field.
Large pumpkins will be carved, with two walls of 1,000 pumpkins painted to complement the center stage. The big pumpkins represent Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Michigan. They are raised on pallets and will be illuminated to create shadows. The smaller ones are from Sperdute Farms in New Castle.
The display will extend nearly half a football field wide and be roughly 10 feet tall. The event is free.
What you will see
The state’s winning pumpkin will be on display.
“It won’t be carved,” said Dave Stelts, who with wife Carol of Enon Valley, Pa., grew the pumpkin. “It will lie in state.”
The couple has been growing pumpkins since 1991. They set a world record in 2000 with a 1,140-pound pumpkin. The current world record is 2,632 pounds, set by a man in Belgium. Weigh-offs are held throughout the world and reported to the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth.
These large pumpkins start out the size of a person’s thumb in mid-April, grow 40-50 pounds a day and consume 70 gallons of water daily.
“You can literally watch it grow,” Dave Stelts said.
We are 3 DAYS away from the Pittsburgh Monster Pumpkins PopUP!
?: Located in Gold Parking Lot 1-A, in front of Heinz Field.
?: Friday, October 30th through Thursday, November 5th.
ℹ️ : https://t.co/gRb5GXtNDH pic.twitter.com/g12MQznM4h
— Pittsburgh Monster Pumpkins Pop-Up Festival (@MonsterPumpkins) October 27, 2020
The secret to growing large pumpkins, he said, is genetics.
He thinks the more than 30,000 pounds are a record for carved pumpkins in a continuous display fashioned into a pirate, a broken-down ship, a marlin, a mahi mahi and a dolphin in a sea life sculpture featuring the city’s famed “Monongahela Monster.”
“They are a lot of work,” Carol Stelts said. “It’s a full-time job. I would go out there every day and check on the pumpkins.”
The wall
The walls of pumpkins will have images of an octopus, a submarine and mermaids.
“It isn’t easy to square up round pumpkins,” said Michael Dongilli of Vivid Pittsburgh, event manager and producer. “I am just happy we can still do the event. If everyone stays in their cars, it can be a good time.”
The pumpkin walls are 50 feet wide by 10 feet high and have been spray-painted by Pittsburgh-based muralists Max “Gems” Gonzales, Shane Pilster and Scott Brozovich.
“I’ve painted walls and many other surfaces but never pumpkins,” Gonzales said. “It has been challenging rendering an image on it.”
For a good cause
There will still be a pumpkin drop on the final day, which will happen in a remote location and be viewable on Facebook. A 2,000-pound pumpkin will be dropped into a pool of water filled with balls. The one ball that travels the farthest wins a prize. A ball costs $10.
Proceeds benefit Project Bundle Up, an organization that provides new winter coats, hats, scarves, mittens and boots to underprivileged children and senior citizens.
Master pumpkin carvers have turned pumpkins into sea (or in this case, river) creatures. They are Dean Murray, known as the “pumpkin whisperer” of Oregon; Danny Kissel of Newville, outside of Harrisburg, who won the most recent Food Network’s “Outrageous Pumpkins” event; Greg Butauski of Ohio, a prominent ice carving champion and one of only six master carvers certified by the National Ice Carving Association; and Patrick O’Brien, the “Fruit Carving Ninja” of North Carolina.
“Dean is the mastermind,” Butauski said.
Carving the large pumpkins take expertise, Kissel said. Most start with a basic sketch.
Murray said they have to work a little differently because the spectators will be 15 to 20 feet away.
“We make it deeper so they can see it, but not too deep,” Murray said.
That’s because the pumpkins are hollow and can be anywhere between 7 to 15 inches thick.
“Big pumpkins are a lot juicier and get soft as you dig into them,” said Kissel, who was sculpting a pirate face into a 1,095-pound pumpkin. “The scale is harder to see because it’s so large versus when you carve a smaller pumpkin and can see the whole thing.”
Details: Hours are noon to 10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Nov. 2-5. See monsterpumpkins.com.
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region’s diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of “A Daughter’s Promise.” She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.