Colin and Donna Craig-Brown were weeding their garden in New Zealand on Aug. 30 when Colin's hoe struck something big just beneath the soil's surface. After Colin pried it out, he scratched away a bit of the skin and tasted it. A potato. "We couldn't believe it," Donna said. "It was just huge." And not exactly pretty. Donna describes its appearance as more of an ugly, mutant look. But it's quite possibly the largest potato on record, the AP reports. When the couple lugged it into their garage and put it on their old set of scales, it weighed in at a remarkable 17.4 pounds.
That's equal to a couple of sacks of regular potatoes, or one small dog. A more official weigh-in at a local farming store put the potato—now named Doug, after the way it was unearthed—at about 17.2 pounds. The Guinness World Records entry for the heaviest potato is a 2011 monster from Britain that weighed in at just under 11 pounds. The couple say they've applied to Guinness to have Doug recognized and are waiting to hear back. They've been having fun with Doug around their small farm near Hamilton in the meantime. "We put a hat on him. We put him on Facebook," Colin said. "It's amazing what entertains people."
After noticing Doug was drying out, losing weight, and growing mold, however, Colin threw the potato in the freezer, hoping to one day turn Doug into a nice drop of potato vodka. "It's one of nature’s little pleasant surprises," he tells the AP, noting Doug grew in a plot where no potatoes had been planted. Doug must have been self-sown, and quite possibly growing for a couple of years or more. (More world record stories.)
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