Plant Creamy White and Sweet Tasting Cauliflower in your Garden

I blanch it with its own leaves

A thriving row of cauliflower is a spectacular sight in the vegetable garden, but few people think they can have great success with it. I think it’s as easy to grow as any cabbage family crop. Cauliflower is less tolerant to hot weather than its relatives, though, so it’s important to set your plants out very early or plan on a fall crop. If the heads mature in the heat, they’re apt to have a bitter taste or go by very quickly.

For your first crop, set out some plants 3 or 4 weeks before the average date of the last spring frost. Pinch off a couple of the lower leaves.

As cauliflower heads get to be 4 to 5 inches across, they should be blanched by preventing sunlight from reaching the heads.

Blanching keeps the heads creamy white and sweet tasting. Normal blanching takes 4 to 8 days, but it may take a little longer in the fall. The conventional way to blanch is to pull the larger outer leaves over the top of the head, and tie them together with twine or fasten them with a rubber band. I don’t like this method because it traps rain water. The moisture sits on the head and after a while the head may start to rot.

I have an easier method which prevents rot. I cover the heads by taking an outside leaf from the plant, breaking it partially at the stem, laying it over the top of the cauliflower, and tucking it in on the other side of the head. I do this on all sides of the plant. This lets air in but keeps the sunlight out. The folded leaves also shed the rain, so you have fewer problems with rot.

When cauliflower heads are about 6 inches across, you can begin to harvest them. Depending on the variety, you can let them get as large as 12 inches across. Be sure to cut the heads before the tight flower buds open. Cauliflower loses its fine texture and taste when the buds start to loosen. Unlike broccoli, cauliflower does not produce side shoots, so once a head is cut, that’s it.

Cabbage: Plant for a continual harvest

There are so many nice ways to eat cabbages—raw in salads or cole slaw, as part of our traditional New England boiled dinner, pickled in sauerkraut, or sautéed with Chinese vegetables.

A continual harvest of cabbages is easy. Once the harvest starts there are always some ready-to-pick cabbages somewhere in the garden. I start some seeds indoors early in the season and set the plants out 3 or 4 weeks before the last spring frost date. (They’re tough little plants and can take a light freeze.) In the early part of summer I sow more cabbage seeds, some in the garden and some in flats in partial shade by the barn. In midsummer I set them in the garden and they grow eating-sized heads from late summer right up until the end of the season when the ground freezes.

Most importantly, I put my cabbage plants in wide rows to stretch out the harvest. I use a 20-inch wide row, and set my plants in about 10 inches apart in a 3-2-3 pattern.

As in other wide rows, the leaves of the plants grow to touch each other, shading out weeds and keeping the soil cool. Some plants grow faster and form heads earlier. Cut big heads first to provide extra space and food for the others. Remove all the leaves along with the heads.

How about a six-headed cabbage

Just for fun I like to coax a few of my cabbage plants into producing more than one head. I like to show visitors to my garden that there’s really more than one head to a cabbage plant. You can do this in your own garden.

First, harvest a few spring- planted cabbages when the heads are fairly small (about softball size or slightly larger). Leave five or six of the larger outer leaves on the plant. For each leaf, a small head will form. By fall, if you’re lucky, you’ll get five or six small tasty heads.

Fall cabbage has time to make only one head, so try this trick only with your spring crop.

Cabbage head cracking? Turn off the faucet

Cabbage heads, like all vegetable heads, grow from the inside out. If yours start to crack, this probably means that the cabbages are growing too fast in the center. (This condition is frequently caused by heavy-handed fertilizing.) If you let the cracking continue, the head will split wide open and send up a seed stalk.

If you see a crack, hold the head and twist the whole plant halfway around, like turning a faucet. Don’t be shy! Grab the plant and twist it halfway around. This breaks off many of the roots and that slows the inner top growth of the plant. Give the plant another quarter turn in a few days if the cracking continues.

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