World’s heaviest peach might have been grown this year in Johnson County

What do you do if you have the world’s heaviest peach? You eat it.

Apparently that is one of the requirements when trying to get Guinness World Records to declare it the world’s heaviest. But of course, you first measure it.

Mark Angermayer, the owner of Tubby Fruits Peach Orchard, is waiting to hear from Guinness World Records to see if a humungous peach he grew measures up to be a world record.

The record for heaviest peach is held by Paul Friday of Coloma, Mich., who grew a peach that weighed 725 grams on Aug. 23, 2002, according to Guinness World Records’ website.

At an official weigh-in Monday at the USDA Milk Market Administrator in Lenexa, Angermayer’s peach weighed 763.39 grams. That’s about 1.7 pounds.

It was 4.656 inches in diameter and 14  3/8 inches in circumference. To put that in perspective, don’t think tennis ball when considering its size — think more of a cantaloupe.

Angermayer said he has been growing peaches for about 10 years. Tubby Fruits’ main orchard is in the Belton area, where he has about 400 peach trees.

He also has a small backyard orchard of about 30 peach trees where he lives in Stilwell, Kan. That’s where the giant peach was grown.

The peach is a Lady Nancy variety, which ripens toward the tail end of the season. It is typically a large peach.

A combination of factors lined up to make conditions perfect for growing a large peach. First, the soil is some of the best. Second was the variety. Then there was a frost that hit when trees had already bloomed.

“It killed most of the flowers,” Angermayer said. “The large peach tree holds 400 peaches. Because all of the flowers had been snuffed off, there were only 30 peaches left on the tree.”

Then Angermayer trimmed any shoots or branches that weren’t producing fruit. That meant the energy from the large tree root system was focused on the peaches that were left.

And finally, there was timely rain all year. The giant peach, which was picked Aug. 24, wasn’t the only large one. There were about a dozen of them that were “just huge.”

After being measured, the giant peach was divided among nine people in the lab. The peach was sweet, juicy and had little fuzz, Angermayer said.

And there was plenty to go around.

This story was originally published August 29, 2016 at 8:42 PM with the headline "World’s heaviest peach might have been grown this year in Johnson County."