Anatolii Turovets, a 66-year-old resident of Andriivka in Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine, has dug up a giant potato weighing nearly two kilograms from his garden.
The tuber initially weighed 1,915 grams when it was harvested in the Mykhailo-Kotsiubynske hromada of Chernihiv Raion, according to regional newspaper Visnyk Ch. Turovets considered applying for an official Chernihiv Oblast record, but as he hesitated over a two-week period, the potato began drying out and shrinking.
Despite the water loss, the vegetable remained massive as of Wednesday, September 16. Turovets explained that his son searched online and found that the current Chernihiv Oblast record stands at 1,400 grams. Meanwhile, a potato weighing 2,200 grams of the Slovianka variety was previously grown in Volyn Oblast in northwestern Ukraine.
Turovets said he cannot identify the exact variety of his giant potato because he regularly plants and alternates different varieties, including Bilorosa, Slovianka, and newer options, while striving to plant elite potatoes. An agricultural enterprise operates in Andriivka growing various cultivars, including the local Andriivske variety. Turovets had previously leased his land shares to the firm, receiving a mesh bag of early potatoes in return.
In previous years, potato varieties on the property were managed by his wife, Tetiana, who died on April 25. Turovets said he takes a simpler approach to garden work, focusing on spreading fertilizer, plowing the ground, and digging up the harvest. Speaking about his late wife, he could not hold back tears and walked out to the garden to hide his emotions, where he pointed out the spot where the giant tuber grew.
The family gathered to dig up the harvest together, including his son Oleksandr, his daughter Iryna, and three granddaughters who traveled from the city. Turovets said everyone worked diligently while joking that potatoes do not grow on apartment balconies.
This year produced an exceptionally strong harvest for the household. Turovets maintains two vegetable plots: one measuring about 12 sotky, a Ukrainian land unit equal to 100 square meters, located next to his house, and a second plot of about 15 sotky opposite his yard. Although he left the second plot completely unplanted this year, the single garden yielded roughly as much potato as he previously gathered from both plots combined.
By the time of the interview, only flattened furrows and autumn flowers that had been planted by his wife remained in the garden plot.
Mechanical harvesting and discovery by neighbors
A tractor equipped with a mechanical digger and operated by Vitalii Koval assisted with the harvesting. Turovets noted that there was virtually no manual labor involved during the digging process. He previously owned a tractor but sold it due to health problems, having spent around 15 years working in agriculture as a driver and operating a combine harvester during harvest seasons.
Koval operated the tractor free of charge because he is a relative. The giant potato was discovered during the harvest by neighbors Lena Leshchenko and Tania Koval, who brought it to Turovets and suggested weighing it. After recording the initial weight of 1,915 grams, the women joked that it was a record before resuming work, clearing the entire garden in about two hours.
Over the following two weeks, the potato continued to lose weight. When Turovets weighed it the day before, it had dropped to 1,815 grams, and a subsequent weighing showed it had shrunk further to 1,760 grams.
For several days, a British cat named Motia was staying at his home. Turovets observed that the potato was almost identical in size to the cat, joking that the vegetable differed from the animal only because it had no fur and no tail. He chose not to give the potato a name.
The family later measured the vegetable with a ruler and a tape measure. It measured 26 centimeters in length, while cross-sectional measurements of its length, width, and circumference in different directions totaled 36 by 61 centimeters.
Storage plans, hospital donations and market sales
Turovets said he has no plans to cook the giant potato. Instead, he intends to keep it near the religious icons in his home, periodically weighing the tuber to watch it lose weight over time, adding that he had never seen a potato of that size in his life.
The rest of this year's harvest is currently stored loose in a heap inside a barn to dry. Alongside the 1,915-gram tuber, the garden produced several other large potatoes weighing between 1 and 1.5 kilograms. His children took part of the crop to the city of Chernihiv, while the remainder has not yet been sorted.
Turovets is also packing a portion of his harvest into mesh bags for donation to a district hospital. Every year, residents of the village donate surplus vegetables, including cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, to support the local medical facility, with collectors scheduled to pick up his contribution the next day.
To cultivate his crop, Turovets uses manure as fertilizer. Because he keeps no livestock other than chickens, he purchases manure from a farm in Mykhailo-Kotsiubynske at a cost of 6,000 Ukrainian hryvnias per truckload. The manure is spread across the garden in autumn before the ground is plowed in spring.
He currently uses chemical treatments to control the Colorado potato beetle, a destructive agricultural pest, as do most local farmers. However, he joked that if he ever scales back his planting to just two sotky, he might switch to hand-picking the beetles or using a household vacuum cleaner or compressor.
With an abundant crop this year, Turovets plans to sell his surplus potatoes, noting that he had already thrown about three tons of old potatoes onto a dump. He has not established a price for his produce, explaining that market vendors ask between 10 and 15 hryvnias per kilogram, but he does not intend to take the crop to market himself and will accept whatever buyers offer.
Culinary potential and historical harvest records
The culinary yield of the 1,915-gram potato was calculated by Valentyna Diachenko, head chef at the Mohorych restaurant in Nizhyn, an establishment specializing in Ukrainian and European cuisine. Diachenko estimated that a potato of that size could produce approximately 50 deruny, traditional Ukrainian potato pancakes.
At the restaurant, a standard portion consists of five pancakes measuring 6 to 7 centimeters in diameter and about one centimeter thick, served with sour cream. In addition to potatoes, preparing deruny requires an egg, onion, and flour, fried in vegetable oil.
The unusual harvest in Chernihiv Oblast follows similar agricultural records in Volyn Oblast, where a local grower produced potatoes reaching the size of a three-liter glass jar. While large tubers are not unheard of among growers in Volyn, specimens of that magnitude remain exceptionally rare.
