Eight-year-old’s 171kg monster pumpkin smashes Ekka record

When little Jimmy Finch was given seeds in class he could never have imagined they’d grow into this giant.

When a school teacher handed out seeds to his class last year, Jimmy Finch never imagined he would grow a pumpkin more than five times his own body weight.

The eight-year-old student at Bowenville State School, southeast of Dalby, planted the seed at his family farm in September and harvested it on Friday.

“We’d never grown a pumpkin before,” dad Matt Finch said.

Jimmy said he’d only expected his pumpkin to grow to supermarket size but his first-time entry pumpkin at 171kg set a new record for the youth class in the Ekka’s Giant Pumpkin Competition, which was previously 64kg.

Eight-year-old Jimmy Finch sits on his mega pumpkin. Picture: Richard Walker

“I watered it, put fertiliser on it and I sang to it,” Jimmy said.

His pumpkin was just 25kg shy of taking out this year’s Grand Champion title, awarded to Minden’s Geoff Frohloff for his 196kg pumpkin.

It was so heavy the Finch family had to use a forklift to get it onto the back of their ute to drive to Brisbane for judging yesterday.

“It was only when we got to the exhibition and everyone was so amazed at how big it was that we thought we had a big pumpkin,” Mr Finch said.

The father and son took the precious pumpkin wrapped in blankets back to Bowenville where they will store it until the Ekka in August.