Douglas Smith is a competitive guy. So when he turned his attention to the vegetable garden behind his home, he was devoted to it so much, in fact, that his casual hobby grew to 1 .
The British gardener has 2 a nearly 7-pound tomato, a 624-pound pumpkin and a 20-foot-tall sunflower. Recently, though, he has changed his focus from size to 3 . Twice in a row, Smith broke the Guinness World Record for the most cherry tomatoes grown on a single stem. 4 , he broke the previous record of 488 cherry tomatoes—which had been 5 for more than 10 years—after he grew 839 cherry tomatoes on one stem in September,
2021. Then, in 2022, Guinness World Records 6 that Smith had actually beaten his own world record, growing 1,269 cherry tomatoes on a single stem.
Growing huge vegetables presented a（n） 7 opportunity to "push your gardening knowledge to do something different," Smith said. "If you're trying to grow for a competition, you learn a lot more about 8 to grow them best through an exercise like this. "
9 the prospect of earning prizes and praise, what inspired Smith most, he said, was the learning process and the strong sense of 10 among fellow growers. Although it's competitive in nature, the community cooperate. "Competitive vegetable-growing is actually knowledge sharing," Smith said. For Smith, the process of growing supersize 11 is scientific.
To 12 his cherry-tomato-growing operation, he spent countless hours reading research papers, sending soil samples to be tested in labs, trying out seed 13 and investigating the many tomato types.
Now, Smith has his sights 14 on a new mission. He hopes to win the record for "most cherry tomatoes on a single plant". He also intends to 15 at growing the world's heaviest potato and eggplant. "It's just a bit of fun," he said.
