The Penola and Coonawarra region is renowned for its terra rossa soil’s grape growing abilities – but now it’s being credited with growing colossal carrots.

Penola green thumb Annie Paras could not believe her eyes when she recently pulled two giant carrots from her garden, weighing a total of 3kg.

The smaller carrot, ‘Little Ben,’ weighed in at 0.8kg and the larger carrot, ‘Big Ben,’ tipped the scales at a whopping 2.2kg.

Ms Paras said the hefty carrots grew for approximately six months, planted towards the end of Spring last year.

“I planted them at the same time as everything else, I just forgot about them in the garden, and they were still there,” Ms Paras said.

“I could not believe it, I actually had to dig it out because I was not strong enough to pull it out of the ground.

“I was digging away with my little trowel and when I finally pulled it out, I was with my partner, and we pulled it out of the ground and we were just cracking up laughing.

“I could not believe that it was a carrot shape as well, it looks like just a very big normal carrot, it was just so weird, so funny.”

Ms Paras said she had never grown vegetables of this size before; however, she is no stranger to large vegetables popping up in her garden.

“We normally grow beetroots and this year we actually got two really massive beetroots that were almost the size of the big carrot,” she said.

“We have giant-sized silverbeet too, it is huge.

“The thing that is funny is they are all close to each other, so I would have thought they would stop each other from growing, but this one just pushed everything out of the way.”

With her knack for growing large vegetables, people may believe Ms Paras has gardening tricks up her sleeve, however this is not the case.

“My friends have been asking me, what have you been feeding it, and I said Coonawarra Cab Sav, just pour it into the ground,” Ms Paras laughed.

“I just watered it in the summer with rainwater, that is it.

“I did not even put fertiliser on them.”

Ms Paras grated up the carrots, with the help of her food processor, and made them into four and a half litres of delicious carrot soup.

“When I cut them open, I was expecting them to be green or woody, but it was just like a perfect carrot on the inside, it was really sweet and had a good flavour,” she said.

Ms Paras said growing giant vegetables was never planned but was great because they made for plenty of food.

“You only have to cook once and then you have got food for the week, so I would welcome if we grew some more big veggies,” she said.

Ms Paras plans to continue growing vegetables in her garden, including carrots.

“I feel like I would like to grow something again around show time to see if I can get some kind of award or something,” she said.

“I’ll maybe look at it for this year’s shows for a big carrot entry, we will see if I can produce another one.”