LOOMIS, Mich. (AP) – Todd Swarts estimates that his prize pumpkin weighs between 1,300 and 1,400 pounds – and it’s still growing.

The super-sized squash is about 40 inches high and as wide as a man’s outstretched arms, the Morning Sun of Mount Pleasant reported in a Sunday story.

“That’s what you call a pumpkin,” Swarts said.

If the pumpkin holds together until a competition scheduled for Saturday, it has the potential to set a world record.

According to the Guinness World Records Web site, the world’s largest pumpkin on record weighed in at 1,337 pounds, 9 ounces. That pumpkin, grown by a New Boston, N.H. man, was documented on Oct. 5, 2002 at a Massachusetts competition.

Swarts, of Loomis, already holds the record for the largest pumpkin grown in Michigan from a 976-pounder he grew last year. But growing conditions have been better this season, he said.

Swarts said his interest in growing monster vegetables began about six years ago when he decided to start a garden.

On a whim, he ordered a package of giant pumpkin seeds and planted a few of them. In its first year, the garden produced 200-pound pumpkins. Since then, Swarts’ pumpkins have gotten progressively bigger.

Swarts said it takes the right seeds, soil and weather, along with lots of work and some good luck, to grow a truly exceptional pumpkin.

Swarts has spent six years building up his garden’s soil, adding peat moss, cow manure, horse manure, fish emulsion and earthworm eggs. The result is a nearly perfect, deep black organic soil, he said.

Once the plant starts to fruit, all but one fruit is removed, so all the vine’s energy can be focused on a single pumpkin. He buries most of the vines, so the vines sprout roots and feed the plant even more.

The result is incredibly rapid growth, but that come with a risk. Sometimes, the plants grow so fast they split open, he said.

Climate control also is important. Swarts puts tarps over his plants to shield them from direct sunlight, and has blankets and sleeping bags ready in case the temperature drops. A perfect summer is a hot, rainy June and July followed by a dry August, he said.

Swarts said hopes his prize pumpkin holds together until Saturday, when he will haul it from the garden with a harness and truck it to a competition in St. Johns to be weighed.