There are lime-green long gourds dangling like boa constrictors from a 14-foot-tall trellis, a green-and-black marrow that conjures a verrucose dinosaur egg, a glossy honeydew-green bushel gourd the ...

But that wasn’t his only record this year. A 450.5-pound bushel gourd he entered at that weigh-off was a record-breaker, too. “It’s a new Pennsylvania record and the first year I’ve grown ...