Monster cabbage! Birsay gardener spills the beans…

A COLOSSAL cabbage which would — quite literally — bowl over the competition at any horticultural show, has sprouted in a West Mainland polytunnel.

Joan Mowat has been left to wonder whether there is something in the air — or perhaps the soil — in her Birsay garden, after growing the monstrous vegetable.

The cabbage grew from a seed purchased at William Shearer in Kirkwall — and, unlike the fabled Jack and his beanstalk, Joan didn’t have to swap a prized cow for it!

“I planted it when it was a seed in the polytunnel last October, but when it grew I planted it then into one of the big boxes,” said Joan, who has never seen anything like it before.

“There were two or three more, but they were pretty small.”

After leaving the crop to overwinter in the polytunnel, Joan was astounded when she realised just how big the cabbage had become.

“I thought that in winter time things don’t grow much in there, but I left it until April and it started to get bigger and bigger,” she said.

“It started taking over one of the growing boxes in the tunnel, because it just got huge.”

What’s the secret to growing such an enormous vegetable, you may wonder? Well, according to Joan, it was pretty simple.

“It only got fed now and again, watered all the time, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that I did with it,” she told The Orcadian.

“I just let it grow and that was it!”

The hobby gardener, who works for NorthLink Ferries, will have no trouble eating enough greens this year, after harvesting the four-foot-wide specimen.

“I had to take it out of the tunnel now that it has its head, or it will start to rot,” she explained.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.

“I’m going to have to cut it up and give some away to people, as well as make lots of cabbage and coleslaw for tea!

“There’s no point letting it sit there for show because it will just rot, so we will definitely use it for something.”

For Joan, it has been fascinating to see just how massive the cabbage would get.

“I just thought when I saw it that I’d leave it and see if it keeps on growing — so I left it and it did just that,” she said.

“I work on the Hamnavoe, so I’m at home for a couple of weeks and then back to work on the boat for a few, and every time I’d come home it would be bigger.

“I never thought it would be like that — it just never stopped growing, which I find quite hilarious.”

In an age when Al generated images have become more and more difficult to discern from the real deal, many of Joan’s friends had to do a double-take when she shared a photo of her bumper vegetable online.

She told the newspaper that she was just as shocked to have grown something so huge.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in real life before,” she said.

“I had grown things in the tunnel which have been quite big before, but absolutely nothing like this.”

Joan typically gets her gardening advice online, and doesn’t expect the rest of her crop to be quite so monstrous this year.

“I’ve gardened for a while, I used to do it a bit when I was younger — but since the polytunnel was built around four years ago I started doing stuff on my own,” she said.

“My friends from down the road come and grow stuff here too, so we just see how it goes.

“The cabbage had no bugs on it, it was completely clean so obviously it’s just very healthy.

“I think it’s a bit of a fluke to be honest.

“I just put things in and see if they grow, but if there’s something wrong with anything I’ Google it even though most things in the poly-tunnel are pretty good — because they’re out of the Orkney wind making it quite warm in there.”

According to Guinness World Records, the largest cabbage recorded was 64kg. Joan is unsure how her specimen matched up, but it certainly makes heavy lifting.

Is this, as Joan suspects, simply the product of one “special seed”, or will judges get more than they bargained for at this year’s shows? Watch this space…