Hillsboro • The hulking tomatoes resembled bulging softballs. The zucchini looked as though their purpose was to inflict a beating. And a bright yellow cucumber measuring 17 1/2 inches long and weighing 2 pounds 7 ounces, well, didn't really even look like a cucumber.

They wouldn't win a beauty contest — that was for the perfectly colored, elegantly proportioned produce awaiting judging Thursday on a table next to them at the Jefferson County Fair. But those who grew the mutant vegetables brought them there in a quest to prove that, sometimes, bigger is better.

The rules in this category were simple. Each entry had to be clean, dry and free of anything that could add weight. Most stems had to be trimmed to 1 inch. And of course, it must have been grown by the exhibitor. Contestants were allowed to use whatever means they chose to get the heftiest produce.

It's the contest's third year at the fair, said Wanda Kiggins, an office manager for the University of Missouri Extension Office who organized the contest.

Battling for oversize bragging rights were a blackberry, a blueberry, a watermelon, two tomatoes, a yellow squash, a spaghetti squash, three zucchini and two cucumbers.

Chris Roberts, a veteran gardener from De Soto and a former chef, served as judge, although his role was largely ceremonial; weight determined the winners in each type of produce.

Nevertheless, he carefully examined the two tomatoes, even though the winner was obvious. One weighed 1 pound 6 ounces, the other 2 pounds 1 ounce. Impressive, certainly, but not any threat to record-setting tomatoes that have tipped the scales at more than 7 pounds.

"I think they're both beautiful tomatoes," Roberts said as he peeled back the plastic wrap covering them to get a better look.

So even though Roberts thought that the overall quality of the smaller tomato was superior — smaller veggies are more tender and have fewer seeds — the winner had been determined: Robin Warren of De Soto.

Warren was not present during the judging, nor were any other exhibitors.

Reached by phone later, she said she used organic chicken manure, as she did on all of her tomatoes, to grow the giant tomato. But she doesn't know how that particular tomato got so mammoth.

"That was just a freak thing," Warren said. "I didn't do anything specific to it."

She also entered the only yellow squash, weighing in at 2 pounds and measuring 13 inches long. Warren, 32, said she didn't think she'd used the chicken manure on it.

In the end, Roberts did have some judge's discretion in choosing the overall first- and second-prize champions. He awarded top prize to the largest zucchini, which had the measurements of a newborn baby — 6 pounds, 13 ounces and 17 3/4 inches long. It was grown by Al Hagemann of Imperial, who said the key to growing large produce is lots of water, fertilizer and loose soil.

Roberts debated between awarding second prize to the nearly 20-pound watermelon or to the blueberry, which measured 7/8-inch long. And for the first time in this contest of giants, the smaller of the two won. The berry's firm skin and plump appearance gave it the edge, Roberts decided, and thus the second-prize ribbon went to Robert Lalk of Hillsboro.

"That's an intense blueberry," Roberts said. "I haven't ever seen one too much bigger."