Giant Rutabaga Pops Up in Alaska

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 18, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

Palmer, Alaska, resident Scott Robb tried to grow champion cabbages this summer, but the cabbages matured too quickly and he ended up tossing them in the garbage. Robb did set a world record, however. He grew the biggest rutabaga on record, a 75.57-pound mammoth of a vegetable that was 13 pounds heavier than any previous rutabaga on record.

Robb, who claims he doesn't even like the taste of the earthy, turniplike vegetable, entered his big boy in the Alaska State Fair, where it attracted special attention. "It looks like an alien," Anchorage resident Janiece Buck told Reuters reporter Yereth Rosen, adding, "I haven't been to the fair in 10 years, but I came to see this rutabaga."

The modest Robb claimed no special qualities as a gardener. "Well, it just had the genetic components to do that, and I fed it and I watered it. It just took off growing," he said. "I was surprised myself."

Palmer, a town of 3,000 just a few miles north of Anchorage, is in that part of Alaska where vegetables such as cabbages and rutabagas grow well under the rays of the 24-hour summer sun and ample rainfall, but others won't grow at all. The champion Alaska cabbage this year weighed in at 91.61 pounds.

Robb said he plans to store his prize-winner in his root cellar over winter, then plant it again and gather seeds that sprout from it. He promises that under no circumstances will he eat it. Even when his mother-in-law tries to sneak bits of rutabaga disguised as potatoes into stews, Robb said, he immediately identifies the taste and spits it out.