Ray Wheadon calls himself a small-time vegetable gardener who occasionally plants some small beds for his family.
“I call it my soup garden,” said Wheadon, who lives in Broad Cove. “I usually just plant a few carrots, potatoes, beets … Nothing too big.”
But there was nothing small about what he dug up from this year’s harvest and he’s getting some big attention.
Last week, Wheadon hauled up an 18.4-pound beet which, at 13-inches long and six inches in diametre, looks more like a football.
“Quite a few people have been amazed by it,” he said, holding it tight with both hands. “Some local farmers — one of them an 80-year-old — told me they’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Wheadon figured he had a good crop this year, but when checking on it a few weeks ago, he noticed that one particular beet was different.
“This one was starting to stick up a little bit higher than the rest of them… This one wasn’t quite the same,” he said.
“It kept growing and kept growing and then, when it was time to harvest my other beets, I noticed this one seemed like it was still growing, so I just left it in the ground.”
Some neighbours and local farmers in the area would often drop by to see its progress.
He didn’t realize just how big it was until he dug it up.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I certainly never expected that.”
Wheadon planted his crop late this year — the third week of June — and said he didn’t do anything differently than other years, feeding his crops regular fertilizer and seaweed.
“We’ve heard about some beets getting up to five or eight pounds, but haven’t seen anything that big.”
He’s been trying to research it online and isn’t sure if the seed got mixed up other seeds somehow.
“I have no idea how it got so big,” said Wheadon, who has made posts on social media to try and get some answers. “I just found it really unusual and I’ve been trying to find out some information about it.”
Susan Lester of Lester’s Farm in St. John’s and Mount Pearl said it's not unusual to see large turnips or heads of cabbage, but was surprised to hear about such a large beet.
“We’ve heard about some beets getting up to five or eight pounds, but haven’t seen anything that big,” said Lester, who noted they harvest smaller-sized beets to package for retail purposes.
Lester said the large beet was likely given more room in the ground to grow and had a certain combination of water and fertilizer amounts, space and soil conditions.
“It all a big equation,” she said.
She said crops harvested late in the season tend to be larger, as they have time to absorb the soil’s nutrients. She said large beets tend to be “woody” in the middle, but there may be parts that are good to eat.
“But if it is (edible), at 18 pounds, that’s is a lot of bottles of beets,” she said, with a chuckle.
Wheadon doesn’t plan to eat it.
“My wife has bottled over 200 bottles of beets already, so we certainly don’t need it,” he said, laughing.
“But I’m going to cut it in half just to see what it looks like inside.”
He doubts he’ll harvest anything like his huge beet again, but the experience has given him a nice story to tell down the road.
“Oh, it’s certainly unique,” Wheadon said. “It’s one to remember, for sure.”
Rosie Mullaley is a reporter in St. John’s.
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