* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

    Sate your hunger at DBA’s Taste of Downtown – Bakersfield.com

    Indulge Your Cravings at DBA’s Taste of Downtown!

    Caesars Entertainment (CZR): Assessing Valuation After Times Square Casino Setback and Mounting Investor Concerns – simplywall.st

    Caesars Entertainment Faces Times Square Casino Hurdles as Investor Concerns Mount

    Why Hilaria Baldwin Has Found the ‘DWTS’ Process ‘Embarrassing’ At Times – WFXG

    Hilaria Baldwin Opens Up About the Embarrassing Moments on Her ‘DWTS’ Journey

    Harvest Fest 2025 – yadkinripple.com

    Celebrate the Bounty: Harvest Fest 2025 is Coming!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    What are we really gaining from technology? – Fast Company

    What Are We Really Gaining from Technology?

    TOMI Environmental Solutions, Inc. Expands SteraMist iHP Technology Services in Healthcare Sector with New Provider Partnership – Quiver Quantitative

    TOMI Environmental Solutions Accelerates SteraMist iHP Technology Expansion in Healthcare with New Provider Partnership

    Indiana County Technology Center’s Joint Operating Committee looks to the future as program plans began to take shape – Indiana Gazette Online

    Indiana County Technology Center’s Joint Operating Committee Charts an Exciting Path Forward as New Program Plans Take Shape

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Cardi B Adds More Dates to Little Miss Drama Tour: ‘Y’all Making Me Work’ – Yahoo

    Cardi B Extends Little Miss Drama Tour: “Y’all Making Me Work

    ‘Today’: Sheinelle Jones Thanks Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Death – CBS 19 News

    Sheinelle Jones Expresses Heartfelt Thanks to Katie Couric for Support After Husband’s Passing

    Sate your hunger at DBA’s Taste of Downtown – Bakersfield.com

    Indulge Your Cravings at DBA’s Taste of Downtown!

    Caesars Entertainment (CZR): Assessing Valuation After Times Square Casino Setback and Mounting Investor Concerns – simplywall.st

    Caesars Entertainment Faces Times Square Casino Hurdles as Investor Concerns Mount

    Why Hilaria Baldwin Has Found the ‘DWTS’ Process ‘Embarrassing’ At Times – WFXG

    Hilaria Baldwin Opens Up About the Embarrassing Moments on Her ‘DWTS’ Journey

    Harvest Fest 2025 – yadkinripple.com

    Celebrate the Bounty: Harvest Fest 2025 is Coming!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

    Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

    Autonomous Solutions shows off cutting-edge technology for the public – Cache Valley Daily

    Autonomous Solutions Unveils Cutting-Edge Technology for the Public

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    Amazon to Pay $2.5 Billion in Prime Membership Settlement – The New York Times

    What are we really gaining from technology? – Fast Company

    What Are We Really Gaining from Technology?

    TOMI Environmental Solutions, Inc. Expands SteraMist iHP Technology Services in Healthcare Sector with New Provider Partnership – Quiver Quantitative

    TOMI Environmental Solutions Accelerates SteraMist iHP Technology Expansion in Healthcare with New Provider Partnership

    Indiana County Technology Center’s Joint Operating Committee looks to the future as program plans began to take shape – Indiana Gazette Online

    Indiana County Technology Center’s Joint Operating Committee Charts an Exciting Path Forward as New Program Plans Take Shape

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

A 902-pound pumpkin? Why freakishly large fruits and veggies thrive in Alaska

September 22, 2023
in Science
A 902-pound pumpkin? Why freakishly large fruits and veggies thrive in Alaska
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ByRobert Annis

Published September 21, 2023

• 8 min read

For folks outside Alaska, the biggest celebrities at its state fair might seem a bit strange. While most rock stars arrive to their shows in limousines or tour buses, these luminaries arrive in the back of muddy Ford 350s and GMC Sierras, where they’re quickly ushered into the spotlight in front of cheering crowds. It’s enough to inflate anyone’s ego, but luckily these giant cabbages already had massive heads.

Thanks to its far north location, Alaskan fruits and vegetables frequently grow to gargantuan girths, found nowhere else in the United States. Each year at the Alaska State Fair, growers compete for bragging rights for the heaviest cantaloupe (64.80 pounds), longest cucumber (more than 2.5 feet), and dozens of other produce records. State-fair winners often smash world records as well.

Alaska’s love for giant produce

For Stephen Brown, a professor at the University of Alaska’s Agricultural Extension, these contests are a symbol of identity.

“Giant vegetables are a really big part—no pun intended—of how we see ourselves,” Brown says. “Everything is bigger here. Alaskans are proud these (fruits and vegetables) grow so huge so far north.”The pumpkin and cabbage weigh-ins, in their 17th and 27th years, respectively, are two of the most popular events at the fair, as fans want to see which prize pumpkin is pudgiest or which cabbage collects the coveted crown. The pumpkin weighing competition typically occurs a week before the cabbages, offering similar pomp and circumstance. Master of ceremonies Ken Blaylock even has an orange suit for the occasion, topped with a sequined green fedora.

In the hours before the cabbage contest, Don Bladow and other volunteers in green vests check in the leafy plants, measuring both its width and its stem. Each cabbage is allowed a two-inch stem, with the excess lopped off with a cordless Ryobi reciprocating saw. From there, the cabbage and its grower are taken to the weigh-in arena.

“If it only takes a couple of people to move the cabbage, you know it doesn’t stand a chance,” Bladow says.

Before the highly anticipated cabbage weigh-in, dozens of fairgoers line up for photos and selfies with the prodigious produce from the previous week. One winning pumpkin that tipped the scales at just over a ton.

Fluttering about is perhaps the second-biggest celebrities at the fair: the so-called cabbage fairies, who assist at the weigh-ins and wander the fairgrounds, posing for photos with fans. Resplendent in green, the six fairies who have played the role since 2005 retired this year in a post weigh-in ceremony, passing their leafy skirts off to their successors.

The competition attracts hundreds of spectators who want to witness the produce entries as they are placed on a huge scale. Each time a new produce leader is announced, the crowd erupts into thunderous applause. Entries are separated into three categories: junior, open, and commercial. Among the competitors this year, were several children who gave their entries names such as “Macho Man Randy Cabbage”  or simply “Bill.” One 12-year-old competitor approached Carol Kenley, a competitor and board member of the Alaska Farmland Trust, after the weigh-in asking for growing tips. He plans to compete against the adults next year, and says he needs to “up his game.”

Kenley’s grandson George took third-place in this year’s competition. The shy first grader doesn’t talk much in class, but his confidence grew after his photo was published in the local newspaper as one of the competitors. He told his mom he wanted to wear his ribbon to school. “To him, it’s a huge deal and worth talking about,” Kenley says.

In-between weigh-ins, one of the event hosts recites cabbage limericks—think lots of coleslaw and sauerkraut puns—that have been submitted from across the U.S., and at least one coming from as far away as Great Britain. Here’s one of the winning entries: 

Oh that I were a cabbage today. 

Waiting in line to show what I weigh. 

My folds and my girth, 

Show off what I’m worth. 

Exuberant crowds will shout hooray!

How the produce got so big

Brown, the University of Alaska professor, literally wrote the book on growing giant cabbages. The fascination is a gateway for laypeople to learn about growing their own food, enormous or not, he says.

So, what does it take to grow such voluminous vegetables? Alaska has a fairly short growing season. But for a few months every summer, the sun dips below the horizon for just a few hours each night. The almost constant sunlight supercharges the plants’ photosynthesis process, giving them the energy to grow exponentially in size, dwarfing their counterparts in the contiguous U.S., Brown says.

Brown and his wife Eva participate in the contest each year, but he readily admits he’s rarely a top contender, preferring to do it just for fun. He and Eva plant their seeds on February 14— “It’s a cheap Valentine’s Day date,” he jokes—transplanting the strongest plants into larger and larger containers before moving them into raised beds outside, typically in late April or May. Some competitors plant their seeds and let nature take over, while others might spend an hour or more a day tending to their colossal cabbage crop. Brown, and several other competitors, have special watering systems that allow them to better hydrate the cabbage’s roots.

Most contestants wait until the last minute to harvest their cabbage; while cabbages routinely grow more than two pounds a day during the summer, they also lose that same amount of weight per hour immediately after being harvested. (In the right conditions, pumpkins can gain an astonishing 20 pounds a day while soaking up huge amounts of water.)

Cabbages thrive in cool, wet conditions, and this happened to be the coolest, wettest Alaskan summer in recent memory. Unfortunately, because of the near-constant cloud cover, sunlight was largely missing from the equation.

“If we had more sunlight,” Brown says, “my cabbage would be double the size. Probably goes the same for most of this year’s entries.”

Cabbages can grow to four feet in diameter or more, but most of the cabbage’s weight comes from its head, not the leaves. If the head grows too big, too fast, it can split, disqualifying it from the contest. Growers face other perils as well. Several would-be competitors blamed root maggots for sabotaging their crop. Volunteer Isaac Vaughan, 16, planned to enter a cabbage, but a hungry moose gobbled it up in early July.

“That sucked,” he laughed, “but I’ll try again next year.”

Cabbages going head to head

Perhaps the biggest excitement this year came from the reappearance of Scott Robb, the current cabbage world-record holder, who was competing for the first time in nearly a decade.

Using hybrid seeds of his own creation, Robb grew 10 cabbages for this year’s competition, six of which were likely more than 100 pounds. But you can only enter one cabbage, and while his 113-pound entrant easily won this year’s competition, it was less than his world-record breaking 138-pound cabbage from 2012. (By contrast, the winning cabbage from the first contest in 1941 weighed a relatively meager 23 pounds.)

Although no records were broken at this year’s event, there is an annual beneficiary: Once the competition is over, all the produce is distributed to local wildlife rescues. As large as the vegetables are, so are the animals the produce feeds.

“They’re going to make pretty short work of those big cabbages,” says Kenley. “A moose can probably devour three of the smaller giant cabbages overnight.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/alaska-competition-large-fruits-vegetables-record-breaking-produce

Tags: Poundpumpkinscience
Previous Post

Pearl Harbor was the only WWII attack on the U.S., right? Wrong.

Next Post

10 of the best new hotels in Japan

Stock market exodus to Wall Street hits 20-year high – EL PAÍS English

Stock market exodus to Wall Street hits 20-year high – EL PAÍS English

September 27, 2025
October Prime Day TV Deals: Elevate Your Entertainment Space With These Early Savings – CNET

October Prime Day TV Deals: Upgrade Your Entertainment Space with These Early Savings

September 27, 2025
Georgia’s Medicaid work requirement program spent twice as much on administrative costs as on health care, GAO says – North Carolina Health News

Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Program Spent Twice as Much on Administration as on Patient Care, GAO Finds

September 27, 2025
TGIF: Ian Donnis’ Rhode Island politics roundup for Sept. 26, 2025 – The Public’s Radio

TGIF: Ian Donnis’ Rhode Island politics roundup for Sept. 26, 2025 – The Public’s Radio

September 27, 2025
City Parks Initiative Launches Ecological Tracker for Bond Projects – Citizen Portal AI

Revolutionary Ecological Tracker Unveiled to Transform Monitoring of City Parks Bond Projects

September 27, 2025
Award-winning science writer leads student discussions at Eckerd – theonlinecurrent.com

Award-Winning Science Writer Inspires Student Discussions at Eckerd College

September 27, 2025
Human Head Transplants: Where the Science Stands, and Why the Ethics Are So Complicated – Discover Magazine

Human Head Transplants: The Science Behind the Procedure and the Complex Ethical Debate

September 27, 2025
New lifestyle brand TENŌRE set to open flagship store in Waikīkī – KITV

New lifestyle brand TENŌRE set to open flagship store in Waikīkī – KITV

September 27, 2025
Aurora police hope to add facial recognition technology to crime-fighting tools – CBS News

Aurora Police Aim to Boost Crime-Fighting with New Facial Recognition Technology

September 27, 2025
Hawaii women’s volleyball team prepares to get creative for Big West play – Spectrum News NY1

Hawaii women’s volleyball team prepares to get creative for Big West play – Spectrum News NY1

September 27, 2025

Categories

Archives

September 2025
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« Aug    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (839)
  • Economy (860)
  • Entertainment (21,734)
  • General (17,269)
  • Health (9,903)
  • Lifestyle (872)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (861)
  • Politics (870)
  • Science (16,069)
  • Sports (21,359)
  • Technology (15,842)
  • World (842)

Recent News

Stock market exodus to Wall Street hits 20-year high – EL PAÍS English

Stock market exodus to Wall Street hits 20-year high – EL PAÍS English

September 27, 2025
October Prime Day TV Deals: Elevate Your Entertainment Space With These Early Savings – CNET

October Prime Day TV Deals: Upgrade Your Entertainment Space with These Early Savings

September 27, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version