Farmington’s Madelyn Price won a $1,000 savings bond through the Bonnie Plant Cabbage Program

• Photo: Madelyn Price

Madelyn Price spent all summer growing this giant cabbage at her grandmother’s house. For growing the 22-pound cabbage, she won a $1,000 savings bond.

Talk about it

The coleslaw that came from Madelyn Price’s 22-pound cabbage didn’t taste the greatest, but she certainly isn’t going to argue with the $1,000 savings bond she has won for growing it.

Well, that’s not entirely true. She’d maybe like to get a few Barbies with the money, but the savings bond is for her college fund.

Still, Price is getting quite a bit of attention for the giant cabbage she grew last summer. She is the Minnesota winner in the Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program for 2012.

It’s a program to help elementary school educators teach students about agriculture. The company makes cabbage seedlings available to any third grade teacher who wants to participate in the program. Teachers are asked to distribute the seedlings among their students, who, in turn, are encouraged to plant the seedlings at home.

So, that’s what Price did when she got her seedling last spring. Actually, she took the seedling over to her grandmother’s house, where she was able to plant it in her grandmother’s garden.

She cared for her cabbage over the summer. Sometimes she’d check on it and it would need to be watered. Other times, it was fine as is.

“We took good care of it,” Price said. “We watered it and we added a secret ingredient, too. Horse manure.”

The seedlings provided by Bonnie Plants are from the company’s O.S. Cross – short for “oversized” – line. The company encourages students to plant their cabbages in areas that have a three-foot radius around the plant.

So with all that in mind, Price planted her cabbage seedling, then waited for it to grow. And grow, it did.

There was a period over the summer when Price had gone a few days without seeing that cabbage, so her grandmother emailed her a picture.

“When I looked at it, it was monstrous,” she said, “and when I got to my grandma’s, it was even bigger.”

When Madelyn and her family went out to pick the cabbage, it had grown to a whopping 22 pounds. It was a pretty good size, so the Prices decided to fill out the paperwork to enter Maddie’s cabbage in the Bonnie Plant contest.

They took pictures of Maddie and her giant cabbage, and got started on the paperwork. When it came time to weigh it, mom Jenny Price said, they simply placed it on a scale.

Having accomplished that, Madelyn turned her big cabbage over to her grandmother, who made a batch of coleslaw. Coleslaw which, Maddie admits, she really didn’t care for.

In Minnesota alone, a total of 408 schools participated in the Bonnie Plant Cabbage Program this year. A total of 8,770 students from around the state entered their cabbage in the contest, but only Price was declared the winner by Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner David Fredrickson.

Jenny Price said she and her husband, Mark, learned a couple of weeks ago their daughter had won the contest. Jenny actually found out first, then shared the news with her husband. Madelyn and her siblings didn’t find out until the family’s dinner time.

“We had to wait until he got home from work, because Dad wanted to see her reaction,” Jenny Price said.

Suffice it to say, Madelyn was pretty excited when she found out, and she’s still excited this week. As her prize, Bonnie Plants rewards state winners with a $1,000 savings bond that is to be used for that student’s education. Madelyn will receive her award in a ceremony at her school, Riverview Elementary School, sometime in the next few weeks.

Tags: elementary school, news, community, farmington, educaiton