How Giant Vegetables Take Us to the Margin

As a British giant vegetable competitor, Graham Barratt grew an 800-pound pumpkin.

According to the BBC, his goal was to squash his opponents.

This is the story.

Giant Vegetables

The world of voluminous veggies is bigger than we might expect.

A Pumpkin

In just 94 days, since the pumpkin was pollinated on June 18, Mr. Barratt said it added 20 to 30 pounds a day. Although the math is debatable (adds up to more than 2,000 pounds), still, it was a speedy grower. His transit plans for the pumpkin’s trip to the next Giant Vegetable Championship at the Malvern Autumn Show include a forklift.

From 2021, this pumpkin also needed a forklift:

An Onion

A legend in giant vegetable circles, Peter Glazebrook won the world record for his 18-pound onion in 2012:

Dug

Stories of giant vegetables are not always happy.

Donna Craig-Brown is holding Dug. She and her husband own the garden where he accidentally discovered Dug with a hoe:

Responding like most of us after finding a giant potato in our backyard, the Craig-Browns contacted Guinness World Records. They were worried though that the “potato” could lose some of its 17.4 pounds from hoe punctures, so they stashed it in their freezer and waited for a judgment. They said they were “gob smacked” when they heard that Guinness’s DNA analysis indicated it was probably a gourd.

The Guinness letter to the Craig-Browns expressed regret. “This has been a fascinating journey of discovery and we’re glad we’ve been able to get to the root—well, technically, tuber—of the matter. We wish the Craig-Browns all the best with their future horticultural endeavors.”

And yes, the Craig-Browns, from their home in New Zealand, said they would give it another try.

Our Bottom Line:  Thinking at the Margin

An economist might say that giant vegetable growing is all about the margin. Defined as where we add something extra, the margin can refer to a margin of victory (extra points), marginal revenue (extra sales dollars) or a margin of safety (longer airport runway).

Mr. Glazebrook tells us that he once won a heavy onion competition by a one ounce margin.

Where are we? Far beyond the world of giant vegetables, we are always weighing cost and benefit at the margin.

My sources and more: Recognizing it was time to return to giant vegetables, we started with the BBC,  (the always interesting) Atlas Obscura, and The Independent.  If you still want more, do take a look, here, at Mr. Barratt’s (shown in our featured image) giant vegetable records.

Please note that we’ve quoted parts of a past econlife for today’s post and copied a WSJ image of the gourd.