Giant County cabbage breaks Canadian record

John Vincent breaks Canadian record with 99-pound cabbage.

Master Grower John Vincent set a new Canadian record for giant cabbage Thanksgiving weekend at the Woodbridge Fall Fair.
Weighing in at 99 pounds, the County-grown cabbage was 20 pounds heavier than the nearest competitor and 31 pound heavier than Vincent’s personal best, which weighed in at 68 pounds at last year’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
Scott Robb, of Alaska, holds the world record for cabbage weight at 138.5 pounds and has been in touch with Vincent.

Vincent has been growing giants since 2004 and is one of three people in Ontario who have earned the prestigious “Master Growers” distinction.

His personal best giant tomato, which weighed in at 4.51 pounds earlier this season, was what he needed to reach his Master Growers’ status with the Giant Vegetable Growers of Ontario association. Growers must reach pre-determined size levels in a minimum of three categories. Vincent qualified with a world record squash in 2009, a cabbage and finally, the tomato.

“The tomato has been eluding me for a few years,” Vincent laughs. “Each time someone breaks a world record the bar is raised and it’s harder to reach.”

This coming weekend he’ll bring a cabbage he believes to be of similar size to the record holder to the Wellington Pumpkinfest weigh-off. But his most impressive cabbage of the season will left in the garden to gain weight for its moment in the spotlight at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto at the end of the month.

Last year, the pumpkin world record was set by Jim and Kelsey Bryson at Wellington with a weight of 1818.5 pounds. That behemoth was beat in Deerfield, New Hampshire with a pumpkin weighing 1,843.5 pounds but the record only lasted a day as it was beat Friday, Oct. 5 by Ron Wallace, of New England, who grew the world’s first one ton pumpkin weighing in at 2,009 pounds.