The Monster

A monster has been growing in my garden for 9 months.  Planted last spring, he's been slowly adding layer upon layer of flesh to his swollen body, sucking up nutrients, pushing his roots deeper into the soil.  He's outlasted all of his brothers and sisters.  Some think he ate them, too...or perhaps absorbed them through some sort of evil reverse-mitosis.  Finally, we put a stop to his crimes against vegetables.  We pulled him.

The plant in the picture above is ONE beet.  It was probably 5 pounds before trimming.  I wasn't especially hopeful about getting edible food from this mega-root, but I made the attempt.  I boiled it...

After boiling, I could just rub the outer skin off.  There was a thin layer of sweet-flavored pink flesh (doesn't that sound appetizing?), but the interior of this mammoth was not edible...it became a whitish color, tasteless and grainy.

I'm still stoked about growing such a huge mutant plant.  There's a radish out in the garden right now that is, proportionately, almost equally massive.  But that's a post for another day.