Faye Arcaro in her vegie garden with a giant sweet potato, which weighs about 7 kg.
Camera IconFaye Arcaro in her vegie garden with a giant sweet potato, which weighs about 7 kg. Credit: Supplied/Marie Nirme

Jandakot: Let’s Talk Gardening host grows 7kg moster sweet potato

Bryce LuffFremantle Gazette

A JANDAKOT resident has “excavated” a 7kg sweet potato from her garden.

Faye Arcaro, host of Curtin FM 100.1’s Let’s Talk Gardening and a former horticulture lecturer at Murdoch Tafe, said she had initially gone about cleaning up one of her vegie gardens when she uncovered the giant produce on Wednesday.

“The recent frost had killed the vines and it looked untidy so I decided to dig the crops up,” she said.

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“I was like an archaeologist getting it from the ground because I didn’t want to put the spade through it.

“I was very careful excavating it, starting out wide and then slowly moving in.”

Ms Arcaro said the crop, which was considerably larger than any of the other potatoes she pulled from the ground, was likely to be cut into a whole lot of chips.

“I asked people on Facebook and they said it might have been left in the ground too long,” she said.

“We’ll find out when we eat it.”

Ms Arcaro said the potato was grown in plain, old “Jandakot sand” with the assistance of Kaolin Clay, Soil Solver and a blood and bone fertiliser.

The giant potato was still 30kgs shy of the world record, a 37kg beast grown in Spain in 2004.

Ms Arcaro can be heard on radio each Saturday between 8 and 10am.