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Weighing in at a respectable 1,760 pounds, a pumpkin grown by a group from San Juan Bautista led by Tony Alameda is a standout, winning fourth place at the 54th annual World Championship held at the Arts & Pumpkins Festival held on Oct. 12 in Half Moon Bay.
“This year was our first attempt at the competition,” Alameda said. “None of us had ever been up there, and we ended up doing quite well for the first time at that level. But as fourth place, you win enough to pay for fuel, maybe.”
A third-generation farmer, Alameda and his family founded The Alameda Company in 1983, with its TopFlavor Farms located, in part, on 800 acres of the historic Ferry-Morse property centered near the Highway 156 roundabout outside of San Juan Bautista.
“Probably everybody’s family around here was in ag at one point or another,” Alameda said. “My grandfather was in ag, and we were all vegetable people back then. I’ve got two brothers who are in ag. We’re all Cal Poly people, including my wife, Cathy.”
When he was young, Alameda’s parents ran a fruit stand selling standard sized pumpkins in the winter. In 2011, when Cathy was being treated for breast cancer, Alameda followed in their footsteps by turning the Ferry-Morse barn into the first site for the Hope Harvest Festival.
“We’d sell a weekend’s worth of pumpkins and all money went to the American Cancer Society’s Walk for Life,” Alameda said. “They sold right in that barn, and they’d have it all decorated. It was absolutely beautiful, and everybody’d come out and buy a pumpkin.”
Alameda grew giant pumpkins in the 1990s when his children were young.
“We did sell with a few families and we would have a party, and a weigh-off,” he said. “A big pumpkin then was anywhere from 400 to 700 pounds. That was like ‘whoa.’”
For the last five years, alongside a family barbecue held by Huntington Farms manager Mark Mason, Alameda has participated in a charity pumpkin weigh-off.
“A winning pumpkin at that event can be anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200, almost 1,300 pounds,” Alameda said. “People would buy a plant or a transplant in April, then all money, proceeds and profits go to Hope Harvest. So it’s really a grassroots, cool endeavor.”
While many competitive growers farm in the eastern regions of the country, Alameda said San Benito County is uniquely capable of growing just about anything, including giant pumpkins.
“We have one of the world’s greatest growing locations for vegetable and fruit production,” he said. “You get colder here, and you get warmer, which is really what you want for seed production. You need that difference.”
There is, of course, science behind growing giant pumpkins, Alameda said, and a good deal of maintenance to go with it. It all begins with a specialized competitive seed gained through what he describes as a “smart small network” of giant pumpkin growers.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “there’s not enough knuckleheads like us doing it. You’re going to have to pay a little bit of money for some top quality seed.”
This year’s crew included Alameda, Mason, Joel Wiley, Greg Orsetti, Brian Coleman, Lupe Carrillo, Nate Chang and Ralph Brigantino.
“It’s a team effort,” Alameda said. “I want to emphasize that. And as a group, different things might come up in discussion, such as whether the techniques we are using could possibly apply to the other crops”
Starting with six plants, they chose to winnow them to three, which were transplanted to a hoop house off Duncan Road.
“There’s one pumpkin on each plant,” Alameda said. “And that plant will require a 40-foot by 40-foot area. There’s a lot that’s going on to try to get it to really perform.”
He said it begins with the bed of sand the pumpkin sits on to keep the underside dry and then carefully training the vines into straight-line paths. It’s an important factor in the pumpkin’s growth, which can peak at an astonishing 20-plus pounds a day.
“You’re trying to get the vine to reroot because the vine itself puts down different roots as it’s growing,” he said. “You’re taking the main vine and maybe going 90 degrees perpendicular, turning that vine out here, and little sticks there, to make sure it’s in the right spot.”
Alameda credited two workers, Irineo Gonzales and Juan Ortiz, as the biggest factor in the project’s success.
“They both tended the pumpkins first thing in the morning,” Alameda said, “checking for gophers, directing the vines, removing weeds and unwanted pumpkins. The best fertilizer is the farmer’s shadow.”
He said that the pumpkin was cut from the vine the afternoon before it was driven up to Half Moon Bay in the back of a truck.
“It’s sitting on a pallet that’s got insulation and foam on it,” he said. “It’s literally on a mattress. Then you have to gently strap it down, and then forklifts grab that pallet and bring it over to the truck.”
Nobody knows until the final weigh-in, of course, what the winning pumpkin will come in at, though Alameda said that he felt certain his team’s pumpkin would fall short of a top award.
“You got to be 2,000-plus to really get into that shot at first or second place up there,” he said, “so we knew we weren’t there. But we thought, ‘Well, we put this much effort into it, we’re going to take it no matter what.”
Sadly, the team’s shot at the top prize vanished with the appearance of the grand champion, a 2,389-pound pumpkin raised by Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota. The top five in the competition were displayed at the festival on Oct. 17 and 18 on Half Moon Bay’s historic Main Street.
Deciding it was not worth the gas to return to the festival to claim the pumpkin, the team sold it to someone who carved it into a flying saucer driven by a delightful alien.
Calculating that the team made “500 pounds worth of mistakes” in growing this year’s pumpkin, Alameda and his cohorts are already creating a plan for next year’s pumpkin.
“We would like to pursue it a little bit more,” he said. “The hoop house is going to be expanded. We’re talking about the tillage. We’re talking about the compost. We’re getting things in position right now. Getting ahead of the game. Not sitting there and resting on our laurels.”
Alameda said that the fun of the project is to succeed no matter what is thrown at it.
“With our knowledge base and determination, we’ll get there,” he said. “Santa Rosa won last year, and if they can do it, so can we. Being able to say the winner of the California Giant Pumpkin is from San Benito County would be kind of cool. And there’s no reason we can’t do it.”
Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival 2026 winners
1st Place: Travis Gienge, Anoka, MN – 2,389 lbs ($21,501)
2nd Place: Jake Leonard, Rocklin – 2,273 lbs ($3,000)
3rd Place: Brian Christensen, Rexburg, ID – 1,873 lbs ($2,500)
4th Place: Tony Alameda, San Juan Bautista – 1,760 lbs ($2,000)
5th Place: Leo Jimenez, Madera – 1,625 lbs ($1,000)
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