By Eliza Ridgeway

JOE HU/TOWN CRIER Amanda, Olivia and Tony Zunino, all pumpkin growers, took “Artemis” to the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off.

Amanda Zunino and her 1,191-pound gourd won second place at the Half Moon Bay World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off Oct. 9.

The 12-year-old Los Altos Hills seventh-grader, a first-time competitor, planted a pumpkin seed in May. As her vine took off over the course of the summer, her pumpkin - which she named Artemis after the defiant Greek huntress - achieved a maximum growth rate of 34 pounds a day.

“One day it was the size of a volleyball, the next day the size of a basketball,” said Vince, Amanda’s dad. “You can almost see them grow.”

Although Amanda hesitated to share her giant-pumpkin-growing secrets, she quietly volunteered that it might be poetry that coaxed Artemis to her award-winning weight. Amanda read to her pumpkin, reciting such favorites as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.”

The pumpkin grew, nestled on a bed of sand in Amanda’s front yard, surrounded by a primordial jungle of giant leaves and stalks. She sprayed it with dead fish and seaweed, and bathed it in manure and compost. The pumpkin only needed feeding every few days, but keeping its burgeoning vines clipped and buried was a daily toil.

The half-ton behemoth was hoisted onto the Zunino’s pickup via the family’s “pumpkin plucker,” a 20-foot scaffolding and pulley Vince cobbled together.

Amanda comes from a family background ripe with giant vegetables. Her father, brother and sister also raised competition pumpkins this year, and her brother’s glowing specimen won most beautiful in the Half Moon Bay competition.

Vince started experimenting with big pumpkin seeds seven or eight years ago, he said, looking to cross seeds with excellent color and shape. His pumpkin took second place at a different contest this year, weighing in at a respectable 1,069 pounds.

Amanda, who attends Terman Middle School in Palo Alto, endured unprecedented fame this week. Her win was announced over the loudspeaker at school, and she treated her ensuing fame ambivalently, stolidly choosing not to prepare for a television interview.

“It hasn’t really hit me yet,” she said. “Eventually it will.”

As for Artemis’ future, Amanda is uncertain.

“We’re definitely going to open it up and take out the seeds for next year,” she said.

She doesn’t plan to sell Artemis’ seeds, although the prize pumpkin seeds can command a high price. Splitting the gourd will take a pickax, she said.

But Artemis, as is only appropriate for a warlike goddess, will probably not become pie.

“I’m actually not that fond of pumpkin,” Amanda said. “Maybe a jack-o’-lantern.”

For more information about the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival, visit www.miramarevents.com/pumpkinfest.