A woman thought she was sharing her meager garden haul with close family and friends, but she accidentally posted it publicly — and it went very viral.
On Sept. 18, Croydon, South London resident Mel Baker posted a photo on her private Instagram of the sweet potatoes she grew in her garden this year — and let’s just say she’s not going to be able to make much of a pie with them.
“My very successful sweet potato harvest 2026,” Baker wrote, sarcastically, showing seven sweet potatoes, each less than half an inch wide.
While nearly ten sweet potatoes is nothing to sneeze at for a home gardener, a sneeze near these would probably blow them all away.
Baker’s photo was automatically shared on Threads, where it garnered 2.3 million views and thousands of comments, with many showing off their puny homegrown crops in solidarity.
“Gorgeous potatoes. 😮💨😭,” replied one such person, who included a photo of what looks like a blade of grass at first glance. “Here was my asparagus bounty this year.”
“This was my full potato harvest .. quite proud but also not proud one bit lol,” wrote another, showing what seems like a full pot of potatoes — until they zoom out to reveal that the “pot” is actually a measuring cup.
Other brown-thumbed users showed off their cannibal tomatoes, teeny-tiny carrots, marble-sized pineapples and matchstick radishes.
“Noice. Here’s my cucumber harvest!” exclaimed one encouraging person who seemingly grew an edible maraca.
But here’s the kicker: Until we reached out, Baker had absolutely no idea her post went viral.
“I’m completely discombobulated because I haven’t looked at Threads for a long time,” she tells TODAY.com. “There are a few people that I know in America, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe someone’s shared it with someone,’ or something like that.”
Baker says her mother was the one in the family with the green thumb, a trait she didn’t inherit, as evidenced by her first attempt at growing sweet potatoes from sprout cuttings.
“(My mom) could take a cutting off of anything and then grow a magnificent plant from it,” she says. “I’ve got a brother who produces magnificent amounts of homegrown vegetables and stuff, but I just don’t seem to have the knack.”
Baker says she is absolutely “flabbergasted” that her paltry potatoes made such waves on the internet.
“Thank you for showing me what I’ve achieved by not even trying,” she continued. “Just like my sweet potatoes.”
