My courgette is bigger than yours
Kevin Fortey is a project manager in Cwmbran, Wales. He recalled how his father Mike helped spawn the British obsession with growing very large vegetables in the early 1980s. “It was just a bit of banter over a pint, really, over who could grow the biggest pumpkin.” Soon enough other pub patrons took up the challenge, and after a few seasons, the pumpkins were too big to fit through the pub doors.
Locals, seriously enchanted by this new hobby, found a venue with double doors for their suddenly popular exhibition, British media took an interest and the fad spread.
After Mike Fortey died suddenly, Kevin took on the mantle as spokesman for the giant vegetable phenomenon. He now maintains social media sites promoting what he considers a sport. “We’re like athletes, absolutely,” he remarked. “We’re all aiming to get the world record.”
Fortey sends seeds from giant vegetables to interested gardeners to recruit new participants. Jenna Brown from Cheltenham received some of his pumpkin seeds, and each year grows large pumpkins that she carves with a chainsaw after which her children climb inside for a photo shoot. She is one of the few women in the giant vegetable world. She observed, “You see these older guys standing there holding a meter-long cucumber. There are so many things you want to say, but they’re all inappropriate. They take it really seriously. It’s like, ‘Hey, look at the size of my turnip.’”
Because new growers participate in the different giant vegetables’ competitions annually, records are regularly broken. Peter Glazebrook of Nottinghamshire has held 16 world records during his 30 years of competition, but as of the 2020 competition, held only three: a 60-pound cauliflower, a ten-pound potato and the world’s longest leek. He at one point had grown the heaviest eggplant in the world. “It was bigger than my head, and that’s saying something,” he quipped.
So what do giant vegetable growers do that the rest of us don’t? Vincent Sjodin of Barry Island, South Wales, grew a marrow weighing 256 pounds 9.8 ounces for a 2020 vegetable throwdown, recognized at the time as the world’s heaviest. His secret was fish parts as fertilizer, regular doses of seaweed emulsion, and “plenty love and care.”
On his social media sites, Fortey advises newcomers to remember that growing a cucumber longer than your arm will require supporting devices such as tights or netting attached firmly to a trellis. Tom Carre, a music technician, had extra time on his hands during the pandemic shutdown, so he focused on supersizing his vegetables. He pointed out regulating the impact of changing weather makes a difference. He covers his crops with a duvet, so an extra warm afternoon won’t cause a split in a 500-pound pumpkin, for example, with time left to get larger.
Fortey even sent marrow and cucumber seeds to an acquaintance in Antarctica who is growing vegetables under the ice in a shipping container. That means there are giant vegetables growing on every continent, and from the various local growing competitions there eventually came a unified set of rules for judging each vegetable.
For example, a beetroot judged for length is measured from the shoulder to the very tippy-tip of its long slender root extending below the beet. For carrots judged for weight, only orange carrots are allowed. Certain cucumbers such as the Yard-Long variety from Asia are not allowed in the longest cucumber competition. Marrows that resulted from a cross with a pumpkin are not allowed in the heaviest marrow judging.
There are rules, because some folks cheat. In the ‘90s, organizers of events introduced water-detecting devices because unscrupulous exhibitors, “the lowest of the low,” according to Glazebrook, would pump their pumpkins with water to add weight.
So, a gardener could grow a 60-pound radish. Impressive, but my style is a steady ration of regular ones throughout the summer and into the winter. What would I do with a 60-pound radish anyway?