Signal Tribune Newspaper

Los Cerritos students are among 1,200,000 kids planting cabbages for the Bonnie Plants-sponsored competition.

By Steven Piper
Editorial Intern

“It is probably like around, I don’t know, like 30 pounds,” Lauren McLead, a third-grade student at Los Cerritos Elementary School, said about her cabbage, which could put her in the running for a $1,000 scholarship.
Four third-grade classes participated in the cabbage-growing competition on June 5, and those with the heaviest cabbage from each class will have their names submitted to the Bonnie Plants Scholarship Program. One student with the heaviest cabbage from each state will get $1,000.
As the third graders were busy yanking their basketball-sized cabbages out of the soil, Leslie Elzing, volunteer garden teacher, was responsible for the two-step process of weighing the cabbages. The combined weight of the student and his or her cabbage (the plants could add up to thirty pounds) had to be subtracted from the weight of the student alone.
The cabbages are the OS type, which are known for developing oversized heads.
Elzing explained one of the purposes of the project. “We are going to donate them (the extra cabbages) to Food Finders…the students with the largest cabbage have a chance to enter a drawing for the scholarship.”
However, some of the students were not so eager to part with their cultivated goods. McLead said she wanted to take her cabbage home and plant it in her own garden. After Elzing explained the benefits of donating the surplus veggies, McLean changed her mind and donated her cabbage, which weighed 18 pounds.
The school also donated most of last year’s produce to Food Finders. Betty Alward, a garden volunteer, said, “More than 200 pounds of cabbage was donated last year.”
While plucking the crops out of the ground was the day’s featured event, the students gained other skills too. “We show them how to cut the cabbage and grade the carrots,” said Diane Olson, another garden volunteer. Alward said, “The kids cook and stuff– sometimes they make spaghetti.”
With their sons in the third grade at the school, Alward and Olson are essentially the only volunteers who work in the garden and spend about four hours a week maintaining the plot. “We would love to have some help,” Alward said.
Each of the four classes that participate in the competition spends approximately one hour a week in the garden.
According to Bonnie Plants’s website, the, “cabbage program distributes free cabbage plants to third-grade classrooms whose teachers sign up to participate. This year 1,200,000 third-graders will be planting and taking care of their own cabbage plants.”

More information about Bonnie Plants’s Cabbage Program www.bonnieplants.com/CabbageProgram/tabid/81/Default.aspx.