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Sumter woman grows watermelon that weighs as much as a child

Rachel Geddings has been gardening for as long as she can remember. So, when she grew an 80 pound watermelon in her yard she had to tell someone.

SUMTER, S.C. — Rachel Geddings has been gardening for as long as she can remember.

So, when she grew an 80 pound watermelon in her yard she had to tell someone.

“I just come back to the house as fast as I could walk," Geddings said, "and I told my husband, I say sweetie, I need you to do something for me. He says, what? I say, I need you to go get my watermelon, but you better take the tractor and trailer to get it.”

Her husband Larry picked it up with a wheelbarrow and thought, "that's a big watermelon."

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She started growing it in May, after buying seeds from a catalog.

“Well, then the deer's come and they ate, so I didn’t think I had no watermelons," Geddings said. "I walked over there and looked and that’s when I found my big baby.”

Credit: Kayland Hagwood
Rachel Geddings and watermelon

Over the years, she said she's grown 100 and 110 pound melons.

She weighed her new one on a bathroom scale.

"Of course, bathroom scales is only about this big and it was hanging off on both sides, so it’s probably more than 80 pounds," Geddings said.

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She said her grandchildren will be the first to have a bite.

“Get a lot of people here when I cut it. I don’t think I have a knife big enough to cut that," Geddings said.

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