Now THAT'S a tomato! Chris takes plum position with 6lb 2oz whopper
A gardener from the Black Country has grown the country's biggest ever tomato.
The tomato, a mammoth six pound two ounces in weight, was grown in his greenhouse at Friar Park allotments.
Chris Evans, the 21-year-old allotment grower, won the class at the Malvern Autumn Show which thousands of people flocked to.
Chris said: "It was great to win the show - there were lots of other tomatoes in the competition but the people who got closest to mine had four-pounders.
"I was really pleased to find out later that the organisers told me that mine was the biggest ever tomato grown in the country."
The Malvern Winter Show showcases 'huge, ugly and overgrown' vegetables.
It's been a great year for Chris, who is a leading member of the Midlands Leek Society, after he ranked at the Midland show in West Bromwich with his pot leeks, onions and the prize for the three-in-one class for blanched leeks.
Chris said he grew six plants of a French variety of tomato and allowed only a limited number of tomatoes to grow on each plant.
"I fed them just once a week for most of the time but then gave them more fertiliser in the run-up to the show," he said.
He's been interested in gardening all his life and helped on the family plot until he got his own three years ago.
Councillor Richard Marshall, cabinet member for leisure, said: "It's very pleasing to hear that a keen Sandwell gardener has made his mark in a national competition and we send him our congratulations.
"It's great to see the names of our local towns in the results of these big events and I hope that Chris being such an enthusiastic young man, going from strength to strength in his future efforts."
Two years ago Jim Dirden, another Wednesbury allotment grower, won the prize for the heaviest leek at the Malvern event with his big pot leek, grown at the Woden Road South plots.
