NC elementary student grows freak cabbage the size of a 3-year-old

Slaw and sauerkraut will be plentiful this season at the home of Fletcher third-grader Emily Prince, who is being credited with growing a freak cabbage that tipped the scales at 32 pounds.

That’s about the average weight of a 3-year-old, according to BabyCenter.com.

Emily, who attends Fletcher Elementary, earned a $1,000 scholarship for her trouble, which comes out to $31.35 a pound. Fletcher is about two hours west of Charlotte in Henderson County.

The scholarship came via the annual National Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program, which gives third-graders across the country the opportunity to show their home gardening skills. Her whopper is nearly double the size of a 17-pound cabbage that the program recently honored in South Carolina.

Not all the state winners have been announced yet, but Bonnie Plants says Emily’s cabbage is tied for first place in 2017 with a 32-pound cabbage produced in Georgia.

This year, more than 1 million third-graders in the 48 contiguous states participated in the cabbage program. State winners are selected by the office of the Commission of Agriculture in each of the participating states.

The largest cabbage on record in the Bonnie Plants program was 75 pounds, grown in Montana. However, a 2016 story in the Anchorage Daily News says the world record is a 127 pound cabbage from Wasilla, Alaska. It was named “the beast.”

It was not clear this week what became of Emily’s cabbage.

To see the 2017 winners as they come in and learn more about the 2018 contest, please visit: www.bonnieplants.com.

This story was originally published December 21, 2017 at 3:04 PM with the headline "NC elementary student grows freak cabbage the size of a 3-year-old."