As my regular readers know, we’ve been hip deep in harvest season here in northeast Wisconsin.
While I don’t typically aim for giant vegetables so much as ample veggies to keep us fed, I am impressed by what can come from a simple seed.
Those who grow veggies to break records are a dedicated lot.
(If you’d like to see a giant vegetable grower in action, check out the Allotment Diary on Youtube.)
They’re a part of the 2016 Harrogate Autumn Flower Show (September 16-18), which features a world-famous giant vegetable growing competition.
Tips for Growing Giant Vegetables
Key elements to giant veggie growing include:
Special seeds – Competition growers focus on varieties that naturally grow larger.
Back in 2013, a grower paid $1600 for a single pumpkin seed.Healthy soil – Veggies grow best with the right pH, plenty of organic matter, and rich, aerated soil.Fertilizers – Big vegetables have big appetites, but it’s best to provide slow acting fertilizer for steady growth.
Choose the right fertilizer combination for your vegetable.Watering Deeply and Regularly – Too much water and the veggie may split, too little and growth is stunted.
Compost tea is a great way to introduce addition nutrients to boost disease resistance and speed growth.Hand Pollination – To make sure your vegetable only makes babies with other big vegetables, hand pollination is a must.
Hand pollinate by gently swabbing the stigma of the female flower with the pollen-laden male stamen, getting as much pollen on the female flower as possible.
Pollinate your flowers first thing in the morning to beat the bees.Sowing Early – Starting seeds indoors or in a heated greenhouse gives them more time to mature.Extra Room to Grow – Competition growers use raised beds and special containers to accommodate larger and longer roots.Thinning the fruit – Less fruit = less nutrient competition.
Prune all but a few of the largest, healthiest fruits or vegetables, and then cut down to one later in the season, giving it the best chance of growing into a monster.Pest control – Pests create stress, which slows growth.
Take steps to prevent pests in the first place, and use natural garden pest control to keep any tiny mauraders at bay.Patience – Even if you do everything right, giant vegetables take time to grow.
Giant Vegetables – How Big Do the Record Holders Get?
World record: 130.5cm long, grown by an Australian teenager.
This is longer than a golf club and the equivalent of about 5.5 regular cucumbers.
World record: The heaviest ever beetroot was recorded at 23.4 kg (51 lb 9.4 oz).
The longest beetroot was 7.212 m (23 ft 7.9 in), grown by UK gardener Joe Atherton.
This is heavier than a polar bear and the equivalent of about 128 regular pumpkins.
World record: The record for the largest carrot stands at 9.07 kg (20 lbs) and was grown by the UK’s Peter Glazebrook.
Marrow (AKA Courgette or Zucchini)
World record: 93.4 kg (206 lbs), grown by Bradley Wursten from Holland.
World record: American, Harry Hurley, grew a bean that was a whopping 1m 30 cm (4ft 3in) in 1997.
This is about the height of an average nine year old child.
Do you Dream of Giant Veggies?
I don’t expect to set any records, but my youngest and I have decided to enter next year’s county fair and see if we can “wow” the locals.
With the new greenhouse, it’s easier to get a jump start on the season.
To get some of my best tips for growing, you can check out the Gardening page, or visit specific posts, such as:
How to Grow Lots of Tomatoes Organically, Plus Innovative Gardening Techniques5 Tips to Grow Bigger Broccoli HeadsGrowing Onions from Seed – 5 Tips for a Great HarvestHow to Grow Lots of Pole Beans for Easy Picking and PreservingHow to Grow Garlic – From Planting to Harvest
If you care to try your hand at growing the really big vegetables, check out the books below.
If you have a favorite tip for bigger veggies or a veggie growing question, leave a comment on the post.
Keep gardening and stay inspired!
It makes a HUGE difference when you share our articles.
Looking for a high yield garden with the most prolific plants?
Do you love vegetable gardening efficiency?
Plant lovers turn to gardening for many reasons.
Cultivating plants is a meditative, relaxing hobby, and it gives those who pursue gardening a set of jobs and responsibilities they know they’ll need to complete in order to be successful.
Some turn to gardening for the chance to get outside and get their hands dirty.
Some love nature and simply enjoy providing and the perfect environment for the plants they choose to grow and spending some time in the great outdoors.
Whether you got into gardening to save some money at the grocery store or to try to outshine your neighbors, the 12 plants on this list offer big bang for your time and energy buck.
Besides, everyone loves giving gifts and sharing their bountiful harvest with friends and family.
So what crops should you plant if you want to
eat plenty of homegrown produce as well as see enough of a sizeable yield to
Tomatoes grow in bunches, and the right tomato garden setup could easily have you producing a bunch more tomatoes more than you can possibly eat yourself.
Cherry and grape varieties in particular, will result in the greatest quantity of tomatoes but not the largest yield by weight.
The mammoth beefsteak type of tomatoes produce plenty of fruit, but not nearly as many fruits as some of the smaller varieties.
Medium-sized tomatoes tend to be the best
overall producers.
celebrity produce their fruits early in the season and keep on flourishing them
plant in your garden.
of fruit per plant from these cultivars of tomatoes each season.
good seasons, you could see as much as 20 pounds of fruit per tomato plant.
Even if you make a lot of salsa and spaghetti sauce to use year-round, just a
few plants should give you more tomatoes than you can possibly eat yourself.
Cucumbers, especially the vining varieties, are known for producing fruit in abundance.
If you are pickling your cucumbers or growing them in ample amounts to give away as gifts or to donate, then the vining varieties are the way to go.
If you don’t need a ton of cucumbers from your plants, you may try the bush varieties, which produce much less fruit per growing season.
You can grow quite a few cucumbers in a small space, as long as you have a vertical trellis or structure for them to climb.
Just three or four vines should produce 10 pounds of cucumbers per season.
As cucumber plants are known to suffer from a mid-season decline, it’s best to seed a second crop in midsummer to ensure that your plants will keep pumping out plenty of cucumbers deep into autumn.
Remember to pick your cucumbers when they are immature for the best flavor.
Bush beans are much more prolific than the average vegetable crop, typically yielding up to five pounds from every 10-foot row you’ve planted.
Pole beans only need to be sown once and will create edible seed pods again and again throughout October.
Like bush beans, pole beans can also yield 10 pounds or more from a 10 foot row.
Either variety you choose, you are going to have a lot of beans on your hands—plenty for gifting or donating.
Plant your bush beans and pole beans at the
same time in the spring.
The bush beans will start sprouting and developing
pods within just a few short weeks while the pole beans are developing vines
and growing upward.
By the time the bush beans are done with their harvest, the
pole beans will be ready to keep your bean stock overflowing for the rest of
the growing season.
If given the proper growing conditions, potatoes and sweet potatoes can grow underground in droves.
Plant potatoes after the last spring thaw, between March and April.
Position plants in 10-foot rows, placing seeds or seedlings 12 to 18 inches apart.
Each row will net you about 30 pounds of potatoes per season, depending on the variety you’re tending and the conditions you provide.
Nestle your potatoes into a loose, fluffy soil
regular watering by hand when plants have gone to flower to ensure they’ll have
what they need to produce the next round of potatoes.
There are a lot of storage ideas for homegrown potatoes (aside from leaving them directly in the ground) that could be a great solution for gardeners who have small garden areas but need large yields.
Potatoes can be grown in bulk between the layers of a stack of old pallets or even inside an old trash can.
Yellow summer squash and green zucchini are varieties of vegetable plant with simple care requirements and big produce payoff.
If you have the room in your garden, even winter squash crops can supply a high yield.
It is far safer to plant these veggies with a vertical support so that they will have something to lean on as they vine.
The extra support will allow them the space and security to grow a hefty harvest without taking up too much valuable garden area.
A certain variety of zucchini has been known
to feed entire neighborhoods during its peak growing season.
Plant zucchini
three or four times during the season so that a fresh crop will be ready to
step up production when the old crop starts to decline.
Having plenty of zucchini and squash plants
New zucchini plants start
producing a lot of male flowers first, but eventually, the plants will start to
produce male and female flowers, both of which must be open simultaneously for
plants to produce fruit.
Plant okra in the heat of the summer months, from late May throughout June, and you should receive more okra in return than you know what to do with.
Harvest your haul early and often, as doing so will help increase the crop
Okra is one of the heaviest producers you can
choose to grow, meaning your plants may very well require harvesting more than
More testing is needed, but early studies have shown that okra
production increases in long, hot periods, and plants grow even faster during
the monsoon rains of July, so you will want to harvest as often as possible.
Gardeners can plan for a 10-pound okra harvest from each 10-foot row of okra
plants they tend.
That’s more than enough to throw around.
If you are growing for food, you probably have a pretty big space.
If you have lots of extra garden room to work with, why not devote some space to onions —specifically Welsh onions.
Cut down the green tops and use these alliums as you would scallions in the kitchen, then watch how quickly the shoots grow back ready for harvest.
Welsh onions also require almost no effort, other than the harvesting process itself.
It takes a mere 45 days to grow a radish plant until it is ready for harvest.
After harvesting, you have the choice of whether or you’ll to grow more radishes again, or plant something different.
These easy-to-root and easy-to-grow vegetables
can be planted multiple times per season in a sunny location, and the radish
plant is hardy in just about every growing region, including USDA hardiness
The only thing radishes won’t stand up to is too much
heat, so stop planting radish plants when the summer starts to warm up in
Blackberries take up a small garden space and produce a very large harvest.
Plus, they are way too expensive at the grocery store when you can have a few bushes growing at home.
Blackberries are healthy and snack-friendly, and of course, the flavor when you grow blackberries yourself—well, it’s priceless.
All kinds of hot peppers, including jalapeno, Tabasco, serrano, and more, are plentiful producers.
Pair them with a lot of tomato plants and other ingredients for a salsa garden if you plan to jar your own salsa for gifts.
Hot peppers grow very well in both hot and
cold climates, so as long as your pepper plants are given raised beds and full
You don’t want to hurt your friends or family (too badly).
As long as the weather is relatively mild, lettuce and other salad greens, especially leaf lettuce, will keep on supplying your crisper until you have a stockpile that you can’t possibly consume before it goes bad on you.
Be sure not to cut down the crown of the plant when harvesting, but feel free to harvest individual leaves anytime you like, and more will sprout up in their place.
If you and your family eat a lot of salad, you
may want to keep all your lettuce crops for your own kitchen table.
eat salad once per week or less, lettuce plants are perfect for spreading the
wealth a bit and giving away or donating some of your yield.
and highest producing lettuce plants that you can grow is romaine.
Some plants may be beautiful or have other
strengths but produce very little fruit.
There are even fruit trees that won’t
produce anything worthy of eating for several years.
that puts out a unimpressive harvest, there is another one you can grow that
will give you an abundance of fresh produce in return.
some, and try your best to eat a truckload while your garden bounty is still ripe
You’ll call up your friends, family, neighbors, local food pantries,
(This explains how the solitary hobby of gardening has the
social payoff of making you everyone’s new best friend.)
Want to learn more about high yield garden vegetables?
An Oregon Cottage covers 10 High Yield Low Cost Pants to Grow
The Educators covers High Yield Vegetable Crops
Natural On covers 10 High Yield Crops to Grow
Prescott News covers 7 Vegetables with the Largest Harvest
The Spruce covers High Yield Vegetable Plants for Small Garden Spaces
Table of Contents1 What are heavy vegetables?2 What is the biggest vegetable?3 What is the heaviest potato?4 Which vegetable is heavy to carry?5 How big is the heaviest potato in the world?6 How big is the heaviest carrot in the world?
What are heavy vegetables?
Marrow – pumpkin, cucumber and zucchini.
Root – potato, sweet potato and yam.
Edible plant stem – celery and asparagus.
What is the heaviest vegetable or fruit?
The current world record holder for heaviest fruit is a pumpkin that weighed 1,190.5 kg (2,624.6 lb), which was grown by Mathias Willemijns.
What is the biggest vegetable?
Although this giant cabbage cited in the Guinness Book seems unbeatable for the title of “World’s Largest Vegetable,” there are tropical yams belonging to the genus Dioscorea that may be 6 to 9 feet long (2-3 m) and weigh 150 pounds (68 kg) or more, although they are usually harvested at about 2-6 pounds.
Which is the lightest vegetable?
List Of The 20 Lightest Vegetables In The World
Vegetable
What is the heaviest potato?
According to Official Guinness Records, The heaviest potato weighs 4.98 kg (10 lb 14 oz) and was grown by Peter Glazebrook (UK).
It was weighed at the National Gardening Show at the Royal Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, UK, on 4 September 2011.
Which is the most heaviest food in the world?
Juicy’s lost the beefy title of world’s largest when a team of Germans from Pilsting took the lead in July 2017 with a massive burger weighing roughly 2,566 pounds.
Now that’s what we call a real whopper.
Which vegetable is heavy to carry?
The heaviest vegetable of all time is the pumpkin, with the heaviest weighing in at over 2,600 pounds, which is just a little lighter than a Mini Cooper.
Which vegetable has rough surface?
How big is the heaviest potato in the world?
World record: The heaviest ever leek was 9.75 kg (21.5 lbs), and was apparently grown listening to Glenn Miller music.
World record: The heaviest ever leek was 9.75 kg (21.5 lbs), and was apparently grown listening to Glenn Miller music.
World record: the heaviest potato weighed 4.98 kg (10 lb 14 oz), heavier than the average domestic cat.
World record: the heaviest potato weighed 4.98 kg (10 lb 14 oz), heavier than the average domestic cat.
How big is the heaviest cabbage in the world?
World record: The world’s heaviest cabbage clocked in at 62.71 kg (138.2 lbs), about the same as the average orangutan and about around 35 regular cabbages.
World record: The world’s heaviest cabbage clocked in at 62.71 kg (138.2 lbs), about the same as the average orangutan and about around 35 regular cabbages.
World record: The heaviest ever pumpkin was an unbelievable 1,503 kg (2,323 lbs), grown by Switzerland’s Beni Meier.
World record: The heaviest ever pumpkin was an unbelievable 1,503 kg (2,323 lbs), grown by Switzerland’s Beni Meier.
How big is the heaviest carrot in the world?
Which is the heaviest cucumber in the world?
The owner of the parsnip world record is also the holder for heaviest cucumber.
In 2015, the same vegatable grower entered a cucmber weighing 12.9kg, which is the current world record.