(CNN) – A New Zealand couple may have grown the largest potato in the world without trying.
Colin and Donna Craig-Brown, both from Nagahinapuri in the Waikato region, were preparing for the spring planting season when they saw tubers growing in their garden.
“It’s one of nature’s pleasant surprises,” Colin Craig-Brown told CNN subsidiary Radio New Zealand. “I don’t know if it’s growing there, I do not know how long it has been, because I’m been walking on it all last cucumber season.”
The potato, named for the “duck” pair, weighs 7.9 kilograms and may be the world’s largest. Peter Claesbrook, a British vegetable farmer, set the current record by recording a potato weighing 4.98 kilograms in 2011.
While Craig-Browns is still waiting for the Guinness World Record update, Duck has already lost a kilogram in the freezer, meanwhile it is being stored.
A large potato in a toy truck at the home of Donna and Colin Craig-Browns. (Donna Craig-Brown / AB)
Craig-Brown told Radio New Zealand’s Jesse Mulligan, “He’s happy in the freezer.”
However, Duck’s presence was initially a bit shocking because the pair hadn’t started growing a big potato, and his appearance was very funny. Craig-Brown describes the big potato as a “disgusting” thing.
“I put the garden fork in it, pulled it off the ground, tore it up a bit, and I didn’t know what it was until it tasted,” Craig-Brown said.
The interest in Duck was huge and somewhat unexpected, which led to a “crazy” week for Craig-Browns.
“Once we dug it up, everyone saw it, stabbed it, squeezed it, we showed them everything like that, put it on Facebook. It’s a lot of fun,” Craig-Brown said. “They call it a virus.”
As Duckin’s popularity dwindles, there are plans to turn him into some vodka, in a move that Colin calls a “perfect game”.
“We’ll make him aware and fry the duck with the vodka I’m going to make with him,” he said.
