Joel Jarvis knows his way around super vegetables.

He’s been growing them since the ripe age of 11.

“You pick up little (techniques) along the way,” the St. Thomas resident said. “It’s just persistence, I think. That’s the reason for my success.”

Jarvis, who puts his green thumb to work daily in Forest City office buildings, recently plucked a 1,487-pound squash off the vine at his hobby farm. The gourd trumps the old Guinness record by more than 200 pounds.

There’s a lot more to cultivating gargantuan vegetables than just planting the seeds and watching them grow, Jarvis said. It can be a painstaking process that requires constant vigilance.

“It’s a labour of love,” he said. “Once you see (the vegetables) start to grow, you can do 40 or 50 pounds a day.”

While Jarvis’ day job with London Interiorscapes helps funnel his love for growing, he’s yet to have any requests for creating anything too out of the ordinary.

“We look after interior plants in office buildings ‘ upkeep and maintenance of live, tropical plants,” Jarvis said. “If they want to put a squash or something (in the lobby) I would be more than happy to make that happen.”