(CNN) – A New Zealand couple may have grown the world’s largest potato without even trying.
Colin and Donna Craig Brown of Ngāhinapōuri in the Waikato region found tubers growing in their garden as they prepared for the spring planting season.
“It was really one of nature’s pleasant surprises,” Colin Craig Brown told CNN’s Radio New Zealand. “I had no idea it had been growing there, and I don’t know how long it had been there, because I had been walking on it throughout the entire last cucumber season.”
The potato, named after the couple “Dog”, may be the largest in the world, weighing 7.9 kg. The current record is set by British vegetable grower Peter Glazbrook, who recorded a potato weighing 4.98 kilograms, in 2011.
Although Craig-Browns is still waiting for an update to the Guinness Book of Records, Doug has already lost one kilogram in the freezer, where it is being stored in the meantime.
Huge fries on a toy truck at the home of Donna and Colin Craig Browns. (Donna Craig Brown/AFP)
“He’s happy in the fridge,” Craig Brown told Radio New Zealand radio station Jesse Mulligan. “We take him out from time to time, put him in the sun and let him see the outside world.”
However, the presence of Doug himself at first came as a shock, as the couple did not set out to grow a giant potato, and his appearance is very strange. Craig Brown describes huge potatoes as a “bad” thing to look at.
“I didn’t know what it was until I put a garden fork in it, got it out of the ground and ripped it up a bit, pressed and tasted,” said Craig Brown.
The interest in Doug was huge and somewhat unexpected, which led to a “crazy” week for the Craig Browns family.
“Once we dig it up and everyone took a look, pricked it, pressed it and all that kind of thing, we showed them where it was and put it on Facebook. It was kind of ridiculous,” said Craig Brown. “They call it viral.”
As Doug’s fame fades, the plan is to turn him into some vodka, in a move Colin says is “proper game.”
“We’ll wake him up,” he said, “and bake a dog with vodka, which I’ll make with him.”