Giant Cabbage Earns Award For Columbia Kid With A Green Thumb

COLUMBIA, MD — Some people are natural green thumbs. Some can't even keep a cactus alive. Nine-year-old Marco Platino, a student at Clemens Crossing Elementary in Columbia, apparently has a special gift for growing impressive produce. The Maryland youth has earned an award for raising a giant cabbage through the Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program.

The Bonnie Plants Cabbage Program engages children's interest in agriculture and teaches them the basics gardening. While in third grade, Platino planted his cabbage earlier this year in the spring and lovingly tended to it. He gave it special planter food, watered it daily and gave it a dose of weekly medicine. He planted his cabbage in a big, metal pot and then put wire mesh around it to keep the deer out, he told the Baltimore Sun.

Students are given the oversized plants that are bred to produce cabbages weighing upwards of 40 pounds. Platino never weighed his cabbage, but told the Sun that "it was heavy."