Joe Jutras hadn’t planned to break a world record with his green squash. But last month, the Scituate-based giant fruit grower’s 2,200-pound fruit was named the heaviest green squash in the world.
When Jutras began growing his record-breaking squash, he never intended to present the squash at competitions. Instead, the plant was supposed to be a pollinator, which he hoped would yield the seeds to grow a competitive squash in time for the 2026 Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Weigh-Off.
But the pollinator grew so fast that he presented it at the 2025 competition that took place last month. He came home with the top prize of $3,000.
“The plant grew so well,” he said. “It surprised the heck out of me.”
Early in the squash’s development, the squash put on 25 pounds a day, he said. Then, its growth rate doubled. By the end of the squash’s first month, it had reached 1,200 pounds.
After the competition last month, his squash was displayed at the Roger Williams Park Zoo’s Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular, a seasonal event featuring thousands of carved pumpkins. In order to be transported to the zoo, the squash was hoisted from the ground with ropes attached to a tripod and lowered into a trailer.
This is not the first time Jutras has squashed his competition. He has won a trifecta of awards for giant fruit, breaking world records for the longest gourd, the heaviest pumpkin and the heaviest green squash.
Many years ago, Jutras picked up Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds at the hardware store on a whim and planted them without any prior experience or knowledge in pumpkin-growing. Somehow, his pumpkin grew to 212 pounds, he recalled.
Two years later, he met John Castellucci of Smithfield, often credited as the “godfather of giant pumpkin-growing.” Castellucci mentored several competitive pumpkin growers, including Jutras. During visits to Castellucci’s house, Jutras would often receive fertilizer and insecticides from his mentor, Jutras recalled.
At one of the weigh-offs Castellucci hosted at his farm years ago, Jutras bought some seeds from a winning plant to start growing giant fruit of his own.
“That was it,” he said. “I was hooked.”
The large-fruit optimization process begins with crossing the genetics of pumpkins and green squash, Jutras said. He added that because green squash have undergone less selective breeding, the plant struggles to produce large fruit on its own.
Jutras can spend up to 12 hours a day tending to his squash, performing tasks from spraying insecticides and fungicides to setting up possum traps, he said. Successful cultivation must be carefully calibrated: Too much fertilizer can cause the squash to split or explode, according to Jutras.
Before he retired from his job as a cabinet maker, gardening served as a welcome respite from his work, Jutras recalled. After working in a noisy woodshop all day, being able to “relax and work outside” when he got home felt “like heaven,” he said.
Now, he said he can devote all of his time to his hobby of growing giant fruits.
Jutras added that he owes his success to more than just “care, water and fertilizer.” He is part of the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers, a group of farmers who share his passion for squash.
He said members of the pumpkin-growing community range from airplane pilots to dentists. They are “people from all different categories of life ... from all over different parts of the world,” he added.
There are no secrets within the squash-growing community, Jutras said.
Sharing their victories and mistakes at annual conventions and online forums, the farmers readily help each other with their fruit-growing processes, he added.
Jutras’s connections with other farmers have even brought him to distant places.
Last month, he traveled with his wife, Sue Jutras, to Japan to visit his friend of 15 years, who organized a dinner with 10 fellow long gourd growers. Despite the language barrier, Jutras was able to share his squash-growing process with the help of an interpreter, he said.
The spouse of one of the pumpkin growers frequently organizes “pumpkin cruises” to Hawaii, Alaska and the Caribbean for fellow squash growers, Sue Jutras added.
“Most of my friends are all in the pumpkin community,” Joe Jutras said. “We grow pumpkins, we talk pumpkins.”
As a competitive orchid grower, Sue Jutras shares her husband’s horticultural interest. She admits that her husband’s hobby is “an all-consuming” part of their life — the couple often cuts vacations short so Joe Jutras can return to his squash.
“But he’s done very well with it,” she said.
After 28 years of competitive squash farming, Joe Jutras, now 70 years old, is thinking of scaling back. “My knees are giving me a problem lately,” he said.
With each victory, the squash record is harder to beat. Next year, Joe Jutras has his sights set on a smaller, more manageable goal: breaking the current record for the longest gourd, which he believes is within reach.
Still, when asked whether he would try and cross the 3,000-pound pumpkin threshold — the current heaviest pumpkin record stands at just over 2,800 pounds, according to Guinness World Records — he immediately replied, “Yeah, of course.”
“That’s one thing about this,” he added. “It’s like you can’t wait to get out of bed to get going.”
