Guinness World Records · https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2026/10/pumpkinpalooza-how-the-worlds-biggest-pumpkin-record-fell-twice-in-one-week
Ron Wallace turned down bigger prizes to weigh his giant at home, then thanked the rivals who share their secrets. Paul's garden line goes one step further.
I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.
1 Corinthians 3:6
Most of us are proud when a tomato makes it to August. On Oct. 10, at the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off in Warren, Rhode Island, Ron Wallace's pumpkin weighed in at 3,156 pounds. That's nearly 300 pounds more than the record Ian Paton set in England just a week earlier. Guinness still has to confirm it, but Wallace appears to have grown the first pumpkin on record past 3,000 pounds. "I was just ecstatic, the place just exploded," he told the AP.
He could have weighed it somewhere else. Other contests dangled prizes, some totaling $70,000, and Wallace stayed home for $3,500 because he wanted his hometown around him when it happened. His first year in a greenhouse made a big difference, he says, and so did his rivals. Giant-pumpkin growers compete hard and still swap their tips freely, and Wallace says he owes them a lot. "The only way you create a 3,000-pound pumpkin," he said, "is a community working together."
It sounds a lot like a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. The Corinthians had split into fan clubs, some saying they belonged to Paul and others to a gifted preacher named Apollos (verse 4). So Paul answered with a gardening line. He had started the church, and Apollos came along after him and tended it.
Wallace's line already does half of Paul's work, because it takes the credit off one man and spreads it around the patch. Paul goes one step further. In verse 7 he says the planter and the waterer don't amount to much on their own, since God is the one who gives the growth. He isn't belittling the work, though, because in verse 9 he calls himself and Apollos God's fellow workers. Wallace's greenhouse counts, and so do the tips his rivals passed along.
What Paul takes away is the bragging rights.
His church was arguing over whose teacher was greatest, and a few lines later he tells them plainly to stop boasting about people (verse 21). Wallace, with a pumpkin bigger than any on record, spent his moment thanking the growers who share their tips and the hometown he wanted beside him. When the growth was never yours alone, giving the credit away costs you nothing, and the joy gets bigger for being shared.