Knoxville man grows colossal cucumber

Taulton said that when he measured the colossal cuke after taking it off the vine earlier this week, he was shocked to discover it was a whopping 43 inches long.

“I just kept watering it and it kept growing,” said Taulton, as he lugged around his gigantic green prize on his 3-acre farm Friday afternoon.

The current record for the longest cucumber is 42.1 inches long, according to the Guinness World Records online site. But Taulton said he has no plans to file an application with the famous arbiter of all things record-breaking to have them determine if his cucumber beats the record, which has held since 2011.

He said the application costs and the process is not worth the trouble.

“I’ll just cut it down and take the seeds out,” he said. “I’ll plant some of the seeds next year.”

As for actually eating his creation, Taulton said it is of the “exotic cucumber” variety, making it sweet, tender and tasty. But he doesn’t have much time to consume the gigantic beast.

“Once you pull it off the vine it doesn’t last long,” he said. “By Monday, it will be no good.”

This is not the first time Taulton has grown exotic cucumbers. Two years ago, he grew one that measured 39 inches long, he said.

“The packet of seeds from Home Depot said they would grow between 32 to 36 inches long,” he said. “They weren’t suppose to get this big.”

But this soft-spoken farmer seems to have beaten the odds, insisting that he adds nothing extra to his garden or plants to produce such huge cucumbers. In fact, his tomatoes and cantaloups are of normal size.

“I just water everyday,” he said. “When I can’t, my wife (Nancy) does the watering.”

Levi Carter, 2, holds a 43-inch cucumber grown at the Knoxville, MD home of his great-grandfather, Butch Taulton.