UK: Inside the Gently Competitive World of Giant Vegetable Growing
Great Britain’s greatest green thumbs break records every year.
By Luke Fater
Atala Obscura
February 24, 2021
Excerpt:
For Peter Glazebrook, there was one bright spot to 2020. A leek he entered into last year’s Mansfield Grow Show, which judges declared to be a monstrous four feet long, won him a new world record. “That makes 16 world records I’ve held over the years,” Glazebrook wrote to me recently, via email. “However, it’s a competitive hobby, so I currently only hold three.” Today, he is the proud grower of the world’s heaviest cauliflower (60 pounds), potato (10 pounds), and, as of 2020, the longest leek.
Glazebrook, a lithe, 76-year-old former building surveyor from Nottinghamshire, England, is one of the most decorated competitors in the world when it comes to the uniquely British sport of growing giant vegetables. For years, he has dominated a competition that’s grown from a Welsh bar bet into a massive online community of giant vegetable enthusiasts with participants on every continent.
“It’s expanded beyond all recognition,” says Kevin Fortey, the unofficial spokesperson for the ‘giant veg’ community. But if 30-foot-long beets, 10-pound tomatoes, or one-ton pumpkins sound like a waste of food and time, government researchers around the world are now taking a serious look at leviathan produce.
Both a friend and rival of Glazebrook’s, Fortey is the unofficial spokesperson of the giant veg movement. In fact, the 42-year-old programmer from Cwmbran was there when modern competitive vegetable growing was launched in a south Wales pub in 1980—by his own father. “It was just a bit of banter over a pint, really,” says Fortey, “over who could grow the biggest pumpkin.” His father, Mike Fortey, helped turn the informal challenge among local pub-goers into an annual event.
