Another remarkable root vegetable has been produced from a Shepton Mallet plot.

Barry 'Spot' Lintern, 51, has grown a 17-and-a-half-inch whopper to rival Maurice Whitcombe's beauty, which appeared on the Journal's front page several weeks ago.

Mr Lintern said this was the first year he had grown vegetables in his own garden, having previously used another plot, and he has more parsnips still growing away underground.

He said he had sacrificed the bottom half of his Whitstone Road garden to become a vegetable plot and that the patch had been dosed-up with nutrient-rich chicken manure.

Weighing in at two-and-a-half pounds, the parsnip was the largest of a monstrous pair that Mr Lintern had unearthed recently and he said they were the largest he had ever grown, adding that the recent severe winter weather may have helped as one of the gardener's tales is that a spot of frost makes for the best parsnips.

■ Local horticulturist and garden designer, Angela Morley, has also entered the Journal's 'parsnip challenge'.

She dug up all her crop in an attempt to beat Maurice Whitcombe's foot-long parsnip featured in the Journal. Despite the hefty crop, the longest root she harvested only stretched to 52.5cm.

Angela, from Pylle, who runs gardening workshops at Kilver Court and is Dobbies Garden Centre's onsite adviser for customers, said: "We have eaten a lot of parsnips from the garden this winter – I should have started measuring them earlier. It will soon be time to sow parsnip seed again, so who knows; maybe I will stand a better chance to unearth a prize-winning root next winter?"