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Then 9, Katie Stagliano grew the cruciferous monster from a run-of-the-mill seedling.
"It just got bigger and bigger and bigger!" Katie, now almost 12, told AOL News, speaking from her home in Summerville, S.C.
Katie and family hauled the crunchy beast from garden to wheelbarrow to car to a Charleston soup kitchen. Plated with ham and rice, the cabbage fed 275 people. Seeing 275 people who couldn't afford a meal motivated Katie to grow more vegetables.
"What could I do? Gardening. That cabbage helped to feed 275 people; can you imagine how many people (a garden) would feed?"
Katie kept growing, expanding to include six gardens tended by a green-thumbed army including 7-year-old brother John Michael, head of pumpkin production.
Katie's biggest garden sits outside Pinewood Prep, the school where she'll enter sixth grade next month. When Katie approached staff about donating land, they knew what the girl with the highest GPA in her class could accomplish.
At 4, Katie invented the "EcoFly," a recyclable toothbrush that raps to remind small brushers to turn off the tap. In third grade, before the big cabbage changed her life, she spearheaded a schoolwide water-conservation effort.
So when Katie asked for a plot, the school gave her one the size of a football field.
Since that first cabbage, Katie's Krops has delivered more than a ton of vegetables to soup kitchens and will have donated another 1,200 pounds by October.
The Palmetto House in Katie's hometown offers living space to 30 residents, including 12 children, and three meals to anyone who needs it. The shelter sat on Katie's veggie route until staff opened their own branch of Katie's Krops.
"We decided it'd be a great idea to have our own garden because we've got a lot of land," executive director Landon Bray told AOL News. "The residents tilled the garden and ... a professional garden master decide(d) what to plan, where to plant it."
Residents and volunteers tend the garden. Katie stops by most days to check the veggies.
"She is truly a messenger of hope to the hungry," said Jacki Baer, founder of Fields to Families, the nonprofit that matched Katie's first cabbage with Katie's first soup kitchen.
"She is graceful, sincere, articulate and compassionate and an inspiration to all who meet her."
And she's busy.
In the midst of gardening, swimming, playing tennis and studying, Katie found time to write a children's book, "Katie's Cabbage." She organized two food drives this month and is hosting a contest for future philanthropic gardeners. The winner will receive a grant to start his or her own plot.
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