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| From Saveur Magazine | |
 Green Cabbage (brassica oleracea capitata) 76.00 lb 1998. My daughter, Lauren, dwarfed by cabbage won junior division state record for her efforts! |
GIANTS OF THE VALLEY By Maria Lorraine Binchet No produce aisle has ever seen the likes of these. Magic proliferates in the Matanuska Valley. By an extraordinary combination of environmental and human factors, vegetables grow to an unearthly size in this Alaskan flood plain. Picture broccoli 3 feet tall and 7 feet wide. Celery so large you can't wrap your arms around a single bunch. 98-pound cabbages and 25-pound mushrooms. If a grown man were standing next to an award-winning Swiss chard in the Matanuska Valley, the chard would be taller than him by half: 9 feet tall. Imagine sitting down to dinner. Located 45 miles northeast of Anchorage, the Matanuska Valley has a growing season of only three months: June through August. What may be short in terms of months is offset by near 24-hour sunlight, days on end when you can read a book outside at midnight. The soil is excellent - a fine mix of glacial silt and loam, to which most growers, like record-holder John Evans, add plenty of amendments. "The rest," Evans says, "is technique." Every year at the Alaska State Fair in the Matanuska Valley town of Palmer, the Giant Vegetables are the main attraction. Every year the crowd does battle to get a better look. Every year John Evans is the man to beat. The contest was born during the Depression when government-relocated farmers discovered that vegetables grew like crazy in this land thought to be all ice and snow. A little friendly competition ensued, and over the years the contest has mushroomed into its present state. |
| Today, Giant Vegetables are not so much grown as they are coaxed into greatness. Evans, for example, acquires seeds from colleagues all over the world and painstakingly germinates them. He fertilizes with the precision of a chemist, monitors moisture like a meteorologist and prunes
strategically to direct all the plant's energy into a single vegetable. And it's not as if he doesn't have serious competitors who every year have the chance to best him and sometimes, but not often, do. Evans has won more awards in this category than any other: 256 first-place awards as well as world records for the largest celery, carrot, broccoli, red cabbage and yes, towering Swiss chard. In this valley, Evans is king of the giants. Remarkably, Matanuska's giant vegetables have all the flavor of normal-sized vegetables. "They grow so fast," Evans explains, "they don't have the chance to develop pulp and then lose their flavor." |
Red Cabbage (brassica oleracea capitata
rosa) 45.25 lb 1994 world record (Photo: The weigh- in at the Alaska State Fair.)  Cabbages require rich soil with a high ph and require high nitrogen fertilizer throughout the growing season, it is important to support the lower leaves for good air flow and to give them plenty of space to grow. |
| Though mammoth, most of Evans' vegetables don't make it to the fair. Most are given away or eaten at home by Evans, his wife and two daughters. "It's wonderful," he says. "You peel one onion and it's enough for a entire week." Copyright © Maria Lorraine Binchet |
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