Down the Tubers : Five-Pound Weakling Dashes Hopes for Record Carrot

For weeks, residents of the Carson senior citizens complex where Troy Stiles lives were abuzz over the carrot that refused to stop growing in his little back-yard plot.

“People stopped every day to take a look and check its progress,” said the 66-year-old Stiles, a retired foundry worker with a green thumb.

In a row of ordinary carrots, “The Big One” stood out like the Washington Monument.

“I gave it a little of this and a little of that,” said Stiles, a native of Arkansas who grew up in a town famous for producing some of the world’s largest watermelons. “It looked like nothing was going to stop it.”

After the top got as big as a coffee cup, friends began to talk of a possible record.

Swept up in the giddiness of it all, Troy and Peggy Stiles picked up the phone Thursday and called The Times. Then Peggy broke out the video camera and they trudged to the garden with tape measure, spade and scales. The anticipation was almost palpable.

Troy brushed back the heavy green foliage and lifted what he clearly hoped would be the king of carrots.

It wasn’t.

“I’ll be damned. I’ll never live this down,” said Stiles, staring at the veggie, which weighed in at a disappointing five pounds and looked like a softball run over by a truck.

Stiles had hoped his carrot might top out at a weight competitive with the 15-pound, 7-ounce whopper grown by a New Zealand woman 13 years ago.

He blamed the subsoil.

“The thing had a head on it, you can see that,” he said, holding up the gnarled vegetable. “Looks like it got a few inches down and hit a hard spot and just fattened out instead of growing long and straight the way a carrot’s supposed to grow.”

Stiles, who once grew a 4 1/2-pound tomato, said his affinity for growing things dates to his childhood in Hope, Ark., where in 1965 a family friend grew a 260-pound watermelon, a world record that stood until a North Carolina farmer broke it with a 279-pounder in 1988.

A picture of the tomato occupies a permanent spot inside the couple’s apartment, along with a photo of a 42-pound catfish that Stiles reeled in during a fishing trip two years ago.

“I’ve got this brother-in-law in Florida who’s also retired, and we brag about what we grow and send each other pictures to back it up,” he said. “In this case, I should have kept my mouth shut.”

As for the carrot, Peggy says she’ll make soup of it.

GARDEN GIANTS Among the world’s biggest fruits and vegetables, according to the “Guinness Book of World Records”:

TYPE SIZE GROWER LOCATION Beet 45 1/2 lbs. R. Meyer Brawley, CA Cantaloupe 55 lbs. G. Daughtridge Rocky Mount, NC Carrot 15 lbs., 7 oz. I.G. Scott Nelson, New Zealand Collard 35 feet tall B. Rackley Rocky Mount, NC Lemon 8 lbs., 8 oz. C & D Knutzen Whittier, CA Lima Bean 14 inches N. McCoy Hubert, NC Squash 743 lbs. L.B. Stellpflug Honeoye Falls, NY Sweet Potato 40 3/4 lbs. O. Harrison Kite, GA Tomato 7 lbs., 12 oz. G. Graham Edmond, OK Watermelon 279 lbs. B. Rogerson Robersonville, NC

TYPE YEAR Beet 1974 Cantaloupe 1982 Carrot 1978 Collard 1980 Lemon 1983 Lima Bean 1979 Squash 1989 Sweet Potato 1982 Tomato 1985 Watermelon 1988

SOURCE:”Guinness Book of World Records,” 1988 and 1991