CHARLESTON, SC — It all began in 2008 with a 9-year-old South Carolina girl who grew a school-project seedling into a 40-pound cabbage that served 275 people. Katie Stagliano, now 16, is the founder and “chief executive gardener” of Katie’s Krops, which funds 80 gardens in 29 states coast to coast, operated by young people ages 9 to 16, with harvests donated to help feed people in need.

Now Stagliano has written a book, “Katie’s Cabbage,” which tells how a third-grader from Summerville, SC, decided to put her mammoth cabbage to good use by donating it to a local soup kitchen, and how, as she put it in an interview, “one thing just led to another.”Michael, a 7-year-old from Charleston, SC, attended a book signing for 'Katie’s Cabbage' and got a personalized inscription from Katie Stagliano. Published by the University of South Carolina Press, the book was written with Michelle H. Martin and illustrated by Karen Heid. Patricia Moore-Pastides wrote in the foreword, “Katie’s story shows us all how much good one person can do in the world.”

At a recent book-signing at the Charleston County Public Library, about a dozen children and their parents filed into the children’s library to hear Stagliano read her book. Afterward, the author autographed copies of “Katie’s Cabbage.” She told The Produce News, “I hope my book will inspire other kids and show how small actions can have a big impact.” Stagliano is the youngest recipient of the Clinton Global Citizen Award, presented to her by actor Matt Damon in 2012.

Michael, a seven-year-old from Charleston who attended the Dec. 21 reading and got a personalized inscription by Stagliano on his copy of the book, noted he tipped the scales at 50 pounds, only 10 pounds more than the cabbage in the book weighed. “That was a big cabbage,” he observed.

Stagliano, responding to an interview question about the illustrations, confided that each of the 30-some drawings in the book contains a likeness of a deer (a careful check revealed deer earrings, a deer license-plate, deer curtain and pillow designs and furtive deer lurking in the scenic backgrounds).

She started a grant program to recruit 9 to 16 year olds into the gardening program, offering renewable financial aid and other help from Katie’s Krops. Winners are awarded a gift card of up to $500 for a garden center in their area and a digital camera to document their garden and its harvest. Applications are accepted from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 yearly.

W. P. Rawl, a vegetable grower in Pelion, SC, hosts an all-expenses-paid camp for about 15 Katie’s Krops gardeners each summer to learn creative growing techniques, host a service project and receive information on food safety. Rawl also provides a college scholarship to the Katie’s Krops grantee of the year.

Stagliano is in high school now, so graduating is at the top of the to-do list, then college, then perhaps another book or a line of garden tools and apparel. What comes after that is unknown, “but Katie’s Krops will always be a part of my life,” she said. “It’s where my roots lie.”