As It Happens5:47North America’s largest pumpkin is now the world’s largest jack-o’-lantern

This pumpkin weighs 1,161 kilograms and took 11 hours to carve. But no one thought it would even survive — let alone break world records, says its grower.

“This pumpkin was never even supposed to be. I dropped a five-gallon bucket full of dirt on it when it was … about a pound,” Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher from Anoka, Minn., told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

Maverick the pumpkin — named after Tom Cruise’s character in the movie Top Gun — broke the North American record for largest pumpkin at a weigh-off in Half