GIBSON - At a time when biologists are engineering perfect vegetables and fruits, a 74-year-old Gibson resident says the giant sweet potato he harvested this year was an accident.

Matthew Pleasant

While it's large, Willie Robinson's sweet spud is apparently 74 pounds short of the world record.

Willie Robinson pulled the 7-pound potato from the ground behind his Bayou Black Drive house last week among a batch of smaller potatoes.

Walking in his garden Friday afternoon, Robinson said he's grown vegetables, mostly okra, for much of his life but has never unearthed a sweet potato that big.

The soil was soft and he pulled it from the ground with ease, Robinson said, but was astonished by its size. As big as a newborn, the oversized tuber will go to a neighbor for Thanksgiving.

"It was laying in there, something big," he said.

Robinson, a retired shipyard worker who now works as a school crossing guard, said he grew the potato from a vine donated from a fellow gardener. Besides basic maintenance, he didn't put any fertilizer on the plant as it grew.

The garden behind his home is about 200 by 75 feet and grows mustard plants and okra. He grows additional vegetables on a 12-acre plot he owns.

Robinson, a deacon at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, said he comes from a long line of growers. His grandfather lived off the land, before vegetables "were shipped to the store," as they are now, he said.

"He grew everything, snap beans, watermelon," he said. "It's in my blood."

While it may be the largest one he has ever grown, the heaviest recorded sweet potato ever harvested weighed more than 81 pounds, according to the Guinness World Records.

The 2007 edition of the book says the potato was grown in 2004 by Manuel Perez in Spain.