Chris and the giant Pumpkin? Christopher Dueck lives with his family in St. Catherine's, Canada and has grown one of the world's biggest pumpkins in recorded history! The 16-year-old gardening prodigy's grandfather is Bermuda resident, Allan DeSilva, and with Halloween tomorrow, he contacted The Royal Gazette to tell the incredible story of his daughter's son Chris.

Chris lives with his mother Donna, dad Bryan, and younger brother and sister Trevor and Kelly, who have also become avid garden enthusiasts after watching the pumpkin dwarf everything around.

The family vegetable garden is only 15 by 20 feet and was split between Christopher, growing his pumpkin and his sister Kelly, growing some vegetables.

Although Chris's mother has kept a small vegetable patch for years, she said her son never showed interest in gardening until recently after catching the bug for growing giant pumpkins from his next door neighbour, Drew Papez.

Mr. Papez started growing pumpkins for his kids and before he knew it he was growing bigger and bigger specimens and was hooked.

Mr. Papez got some seeds from a champion grower at a festival and gave some to Chris and they tended their plants together throughout the summer.

Chris planted his seeds on May 9 and the plant grew, and grew, and grew, and as the fruit got larger the family realised they had a world class pumpkin.

"My favourite part was measuring the pumpkin and seeing how big it was and how much it grew,'' said Chris who visits Bermuda twice a year.

Last year Chris grew two pumpkins, and placed third in a contest, but this year he concentrated all his effort into one with startling results.

Pumpkin growers started flocking to see the orange marvel, which was featured on the web and weighed as much as a mini, and some champion pumpkin growers said it was the largest they have ever seen.

Watching the fruit grow was a nerve racking time for Chris and one day the pumpkin developed a split which was covered in a protective tar substance along with the stem to guard against rotting.

Mr. DeSilva was in frequent contact with Chris who said at one point the fruit was growing at the rate of 100 pounds a day! Growers begged to get their hands on some of the 170 seeds, worth $10 to $20 each, that were removed from the inside of the pumpkin before it started to rot.

In order to get the seeds before they rotted, a hole was cut into the side and a small four-year-old child from the neighbourhood was sent in to scoop them out.

The pumpkin was left intact so that Mr. DeSilva, who went to visit the family soon after, could see the fruit in its entirety.

Mr. DeSilva said most world class pumpkins of this size are grown professionally on farms but said Chris had been very devoted and was up at 7 a.m. in the mornings nurturing and protecting the pumpkin.

At times, he spent four hours a day in the garden and in addition to watering, the plant needed to be fertilised with organic material.

With care, Chris hand-picked bugs off his cherished plant and pruned and buried the vines for optimal growing conditions.

A backhoe was required to lift the pumpkin out of Chris's garden to weigh it which they decided to do before the region's big pumpkin festival as they feared it might split and start to rot.

When they turned the pumpkin over, their suspicions were realised, and to their shock, the fruit had a hole in the bottom from which an estimated 100 to 150 pounds of innards had leaked out.

But Chris had surpassed the Canadian record, and his pumpkin was one of the largest grown in the world this year.

The final official weight of Chris's pumpkin was 1,057 pounds, the fifth largest ever grown in the world.

And as Mr. DeSilva said, "This is a feat never accomplished by a back yard grower it is usually left to the professional.'' The world record is 1,131 pounds and it is estimated Chris would have surpassed it by almost 50 pounds if not for the split which led to the leakage.

Ken Armstrong, a fellow giant-pumpkin grower and member of the Norfolk Giant Growers Association, drove to St. Catherine's recently to observe and record the weighing as an unbiased third party.

"I think it's a darn nice pumpkin,'' he said.

The leakage from Chris's pumpkin was caused as it was just too heavy for the earth it was sitting on creating the split, meaning the pumpkin was world record size, but not weight.

Mr. DeSilva also said it had been very hard to contact the Guinness World Record Association in an effort to find out exactly how to qualify for a world record.

It was only three or four years ago that a pumpkin exceeded 1,000 pounds and in today's competitive pumpkin growing circles, the big achievement is to surpass the 1,000 pound mark.

Mr. DeSilva said Chris went to a pumpkin festival soon after weighing his fruit where the largest pumpkins grown in the US and Canada this year were on display.

The largest pumpkin was 1091 pounds, just 35 pounds heavier than Chris's pumpkin after it had lost an estimated 100 to 150 pounds through leakage.

Top prize at the festival was $25,000, and as Mr. DeSilva said: "Had he not had a hole in his pumpkin, he would have been laughing all the way to the bank.'' Pumpkins with splits do not qualify for competitions.

Second prize of $5,000 went to a 1041 pound pumpkin, and third prize was only an 800 pounder.

The family has caught the pumpkin growing bug and is already preparing for next year having trucked in several loads of compost, peat moss and soil and the old pumpkin has been carved up and added to the mix.

Their garden is now three feet higher, and Chris's hope is that his next pumpkin will suck up all the nutrients and be even bigger than this year's marvel.

One man and his fruit: Chris Dueck is dwarfed by his 1,000 pound plus pumpkin which he grew in his family vegetable patch in Victoria Canada. It was reckoned to be the fifth largest pumpkin ever grown in the world.

Jack O' Lantern House: A four-year-old child emerges from the 1,000 pound plus pumpkin grown in Canada by Chris Deuck, whose grandfather is Bermuda resident Allan DeSilva. The young boy from Chris' neighbourhood was sent inside to extract the valuable seeds before they rotted.