Rockford student wins $1000 scholarship for growing 20-pound cabbage
Kids across America are growing — and some are earning — a lot of ‘green’ participating in the National Bonnie Plants Third Grade Cabbage program, and this year’s winner for California is Rockford School’s Chase Tienken.
Tienken grew a beautiful 20 pound cabbage this year, and was randomly selected by California’s Agriculture Department to receive a $1,000 saving bond towards his education from Bonnie Plants.
This year, more than 1 million third graders in the 48 contiguous states have gotten hands-on gardening experience, growing colossal cabbages with high hopes to win ‘best in state’ and
Each year Bonnie Plants trucks free O.S. Cross or ‘oversized’ cabbage plants to third grade classrooms whose teachers have signed up for the program online.
If nurtured and cared for, kids can cultivate, nurture and grow giant cabbages, some much bigger than a basketball, often tipping the scales at over over 40 pounds.
In 1996, Bonnie Plants initiated the Third Grade Cabbage Program in and around their headquarters in Union Springs, Alabama with a mission to inspire a love of vegetable gardening in young people and continue to grow the next generation of gardeners.
“The Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program is a wonderful way to engage children’s interest in agriculture while teaching them not only the basics of gardening, but the importance of our food systems and growing our own”, said Stan Cope, President of Bonnie Plants.
The program exposes children to agriculture and demonstrates through hands-on experience where food comes from. The program also offers youth valuable life lessons in nurture,
nature, responsibility, selfconfidence and accomplishment.