The fattest gourd

Kent Elliott has an orange thumb.

He won a neighborhood challenge by growing a pumpkin that weighed in at 362 pounds, which beat out the other 15 competitors who bought in at $20 apiece. Some of them came close, though, with gourds in the 300- to 315-pound range.

Elliott grew the pumpkin from a seedling about an inch-and-a-half tall. One was given to each of the Costa Mesa neighbors in a small cup full of soil.

The growing process was relatively straightforward: just frequent watering and occasional helpings of Miracle-Gro, but the weighing process was a bit of a spectacle.

Two men needed to help Elliott get the pumpkin on a red wagon to move it to the weighing station.

A make-shift balance was rigged up with the pumpkin on one end and a 300-pound man on the other.

The 300-pound man was then handed weights in known increments to hold until the combined weight of the man and the metal equaled that of the pumpkin.

About 25 people stood in the street and watched the show.

On Sunday, the pumpkin was carved with “creepy-looking eyes, a big nose and toothy grin,” as Elliott describes it.

— Alan Blank