How this monster 2.7kg sweet potato grew in my garden and freaked me out

FOR months this monster sweet potato grew on everything it could grab hold of in my garden, including the neighbour’s fence. It freaked me out.

Lawrence Machado with the giant sweet potato he grew in his garden. Picture: Jake McCallum

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FOR months, it just grew on everything it could grab hold of, including the neighbour’s fence.

Being the first time I have seen a sweet potato plant grow this well, I let it go wherever it wanted except the lawn. I have in the past cultivated potatoes with some success but this sweet potato plant certainly knew what it wanted.

Now I know why. When I dug up the root vegetable, I discovered a monster.

The 2.7kg sweet potato.

Lawrence Machado with the giant sweet potato. Picture: Jake McCallum

It was a giant weighing in at 2.7kg, which took almost an hour to dig out of my garden at Wentworthville last Saturday.

I did what I could to help it along, regularly fertilising it and the other plants in my garden with Seasol, that superb fertiliser made from seaweed, in addition to cow and chicken manure.

This was also topped up by bags of mushroom compost, purchased from a very reasonable farmer in Vineyard.

So after many years of gardening, I struck gold — not literally as I would have wished — but with the biggest and heaviest vegetable I have grown myself.

The time I spend digging was worth all the time and effort I had spent on the plant.

Lawrence Machado discovered a giant sweet potato in his home veggie patch. Picture: Jake McCallum

I had earlier dug out a few impressive looking ones in the garden bed next to this one, with one weighing just over 1kg.

I moved across to the next bed and saw a rounded mould sticking out and excited, I started digging around it to prise it out.

Even after several minutes, it wasn’t budging and I used one of the small gardening tools to help me now but still there was more to go.

There was another one next to it and I took it out, it was a decent size and I felt happy about the harvest — so far.

The plant which produced the giant 2.7kg sweet potato in Wentworthville.

I kept on digging — with a few breaks in-between — finding it a bit hard because it had grown next to the fence.

Finally, when it was ready to roll out, I was stunned at the size of it as it was a tad heavy for my hands. Actually it’s even bigger than my large bald head.

My wife Roshan, her mum Praema and I then weighed it using my cousin chef Angelo Roche’s trusty weighing scale and we were all had smiles as big as the sweet potato when it stopped at 2.7kg.

I have more potatoes growing in my yard and have shared the others I have pulled out.

But the sweetest taste was when we boiled a couple and ate them that morning itself with some salt and Sri Lankan-style sambol.

The sweet potato plant thrived along the garden and fence.

I always loved gardening, even back in Sri Lanka, and get a thrill when the plants bloom and yield their bounty, even if the bounty was small and only brought pride to myself.

I continued my gardening when I moved over to Sydney several moons ago and despite many disappointments — losing potential crops to garden pests and the extreme weather — I persisted.

The monster 2.7kg sweet potato. Picture: Angelo Roche

Spending time in the garden also gives me a welcome break from the humdrum of life and while many of my family and friends find me eccentric for talking and singing to my plants, I find it helps them (the plants, not the sceptics) and me.

Many a time I have coaxed dying plants back to life with the extra TLC and also thank them for their produce when picking them ... yes, now you know what many have suspected, I am definitely bonkers.

By way, do you know I also grow chillies and different varieties of it?
That’s a story for another day.