Festival Features Small Car-Sized Gourds, Enormous Pumpkins

With fall comes changing colors and of course, all things pumpkin, especially in Northern California. Elk Grove’s Giant Pumpkin Festival kicked off on Saturday. They celebrated everything from pumpkin spice lattes to gourds the size of small cars. Hundreds of growers from all over the western United States gathered to show off their biggest crops. Organizers said the big draw is the prize money. The winners received seven dollars per pound. If a pumpkin weighs in at 2,000 pounds, that’s $1,000 in prize money. One of the participants said a lot of effort goes into growing something this size and including the right soil quality and seeds.