Finishing as the runner-up in last year’s Uesugi Farms Great Pumpkin Weigh-off did not sit well with 48-year-old Napa gardener Leonardo Urena.
So, the veteran giant pumpkin harvester went back to the drawing board determined to return in 2016 with a championship gourd.
“Nobody likes second place,” said Urena, who works at Hudson Vineyard in Napa. “I promised myself I’d return to win in Morgan Hill.”
Urena did not break that promise to himself, as his 2016 first-place pumpkin weighed in at 1,937 pounds at the Oct. 8 event at the San Martin farm. At $7 per pound, Urena walked away with a hefty $13,559 winner’s check.
“That’s my personal best,” said Urena, who pumped up his production from last year’s 1,710-pound runner-up pumpkin. “It came so quick. My dream came true. I won this competition that is so hard to win….I’m really proud of myself.”
Urena has won and placed at several other pumpkin weigh-offs over his 16 years of growing the giants gourds. He was victorious in Half Moon Bay and Elk Grove in years past. But Uesugi was the one he coveted most.
“This is the one I wanted to win so bad,” Urena said. “I’ve been growing them for 16 years and every year I learn a little bit more….I talk to all kinds of growers. We share ideas. That’s the way to getting them bigger and bigger.”
Urena was appreciative to his boss, Lee Hudson, for giving him the gardening space to grow his pumpkins along with other vegetables that go straight to his own family’s dinner table. In fact, Urena said it was at his boss’s request that he first started growing pumpkins.
“I started to grow giant pumpkins like an accident,” he shared. “My boss wanted to have some big pumpkins on his front porch for Halloween one year. He said, ‘If you grow one, I get to keep it. If you grow two, I keep one and you keep the other one.’”
Uesugi Farms gets to keep Urena’s pumpkin through Halloween for all visitors to see as they visit the local pumpkin farm. But Urena said he will return the day after to collect the seeds from his prized pumpkin to use for the next crop of giant pumpkins.
“On Halloween, they carve them and we come pick up the seeds because they are so valuable to us. We trade with growers around the world,” said Urena, who plans to defend his Uesugi title next year. “I’ll be back.”
The family-run Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park (14485 Monterey Road in San Martin), now in its 31st year of operation, encompasses 43 acres and more than 15 attractions. It is opened from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 9 p.m. over the weekend.
