World-record tomato

Grown by a man in Ely, Minnesota, it weighed 8.41 pounds.

The Big Zac variety tends to have “megablooms,” with individual tomatoes growing fused together. MacCoy said his record-breaking tomato looks like five individual fruits wrapped into one.

He started the plants on April 15 indoors, then moved them to his greenhouse in early May. From there he carefully pruned the plants of all other growth except the vine supporting his tomato, using a theory that a small plant would produce larger tomatoes.

Dehydrated chicken manure, kelp meal, humic acid, triple-10 fertilizer and other “stuff like that” kept the soil nourished, said MacCoy. Even the watering was by design: he watered the plant by hand using rainwater he collected in a barrel. When the tomato’s weight became too much for the plant, Sara bought a pair of pantyhose to use as a sling to support it.