Waroona farmer Victor Thompson was blown away when his vegetable patch in Yarloop yielded a rather surprising crop.
The veggie patch, grown at his friends’ place, hadn’t been affected by the fire: indeed, it was one of the only parts of the property left unscorched, with Mr Thompson losing only four capsicum plants.
“It was about time to dig the sweet potatoes, so I saw this mound, and started digging around, and next you know, they’re larger and larger, and we’re struggling to dig it out of the ground, and weighed it, and it was 21.8 kilos,” Mr Thompson said.
He believes the “basketball” sized sweet potato could have broken an Australian record, and though he is yet to confirm this, the heaviest record he’s found was six kilos.
Several other sweet potatoes in the crop were well oversized: two of them weighed in at ten and a half kilos.
“We didn’t set out to grow a giant vegetable at all, it was just a freak of nature. We put the little shoots into the ground, and then… they grew larger, it was about time to pick it, and there it was,” he said.
The seedlings were planted in November last year, and left in for the usual 4-5 months it takes for sweet potatoes to mature.
Mr Thompson grows fruits and vegetables for use in his own catering and preserves company, for which he tries to include as much of his pesticide-free home-grown produce as possible.
“We usually grow [sweet potatoes], and put them in soups and stews,” he said.
However, he said the giant ones were too big to eat, because they turn woody at that size.