Growing a giant pumpkin takes a giant time commitment. Why do growers put in so much effort for something that’s vulnerable to the elements and isn’t good for baking?

ENON VALLEY, Pa. — In the valley of giants, pumpkins heavier than grand pianos rest atop cushioned pallets waiting to be weighed, while the mad scientist who grew them from tiny seeds sized them up from afar. “No, not those ones,” farmer Dave Stelts says on this late September afternoon. “Those are just the babies.”

Their hard work pays off at events like the UK Giant Vegetable Championship, where they can display their enormous vegetables to gawking masses, and mingle with fellow growers fro

It’s a tradition not only in the great outdoors of Colorado but around the free world. Growing giant pumpkins. The question is, why?

They are among scores of competitors displaying their huge veg in the CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championship at the Malvern Autumn Show in Worcestershire between 27 and 29 September. Horticulturist Ian Paton, 63, who grows giant pumpkins with brother Stuart, said they were “really close” to growing a world-beating one.