Vegetables in the Cabbage Fam¬ily like it Cool Fan

I plant them early, at least 3 or 4 weeks before the last spring frost date, and also later in the season so they can mature in the cool weather of fall.

A couple of years ago, Jan and I picked our first heads of broccoli a few days before Memorial Day, and cut the last ones from our fall planting on Thanksgiving Day. If you live south of my homestead, you can easily get a longer season of cabbage family crops—especially in the fall.

The light frosts and cold weather of fall don’t hurt the cabbage family vegetables. In fact, a light frost adds tangy sweetness to Chinese cabbage and brussels sprouts maturing in fall.

Brussels sprouts are the hardiest of the whole family. I once picked a basket of them in January. They were frozen right on the stalk but they cooked up beautifully.

My late crop of cabbage tastes great and the heads keep longer because I harvest them at the last possible moment. I put them in my root cellar when it is quite cool down there and will stay that way for months.

Fall crops are nearly pest-free

The best thing about a fall crop is that you’ll rarely have a disease or insect problem. Most pests hit hardest in late spring and early summer. By the time the cool weather of fall rolls around, pests are more interested in finding a home for the winter than going on a picnic, so they do little or no damage to your crops. This kind of worry-free gardening is the best.

When you make out your garden plan, aim for two harvests of cabbages, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kohlrabi—an early one and one late in the season just before you put your garden to bed for the winter.

Pinch leaves off transplants

When I transplant cabbage family members, I pick off some of the lower leaves on each seedling. I do this both for my early spring crop and for the plants I set in the garden later. These lower leaves yellow and drop off anyway, so why leave them on the plant to sap energy from the roots? Trimming them gives the plant a much better start, especially when they are transplanted late in the summer. The soil then is more apt to heat up and dry out, and whatever you can do to take the strain off the roots will help.

Sometimes I take all the leaves off a small plant, keeping just the center bud of the plant, what I call “a little mouse ear.” This mouse ear is the life of the plant. If you snip it accidentally you’re out of business.

Crowd your Cabbage family

People put their cabbage family crops much too far apart in the rows. There’s a better way. Put them as close as 10 inches apart. This may seem painfully close to some gardeners, especially when 18 or 24 inches is usually recommended on seed packets. But several good things happen when you make close neighbors out of your cabbage family crops:

You can fit more plants in each row and have a much bigger harvest from the same space. (My tests on cabbage, for example, show a 50 percent increase in amount of food on a per square foot basis.)

Leaves of the plant quickly reach out to their neighbors and shade the ground. This blocks out weeds and keeps the soil moist and cool.

3. You get a continuous harvest of cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and Chinese cabbage. Because these crops are in a wide row, they will mature over a long stretch of time, not just within a few days as often happens with many widely spaced plants in single rows.

In a wide row, some plants get ahead of the rest and grow faster. They take a good share of the nutrients, which keeps their neighbors growing at a slower pace. When the biggest plants are harvested, though, neighboring plants suddenly have more sun, food, and water. They put on a spurt and are soon ready to pick. A long harvest is more enjoyable and easier to manage in the kitchen than a huge harvest in just a few days.

How close is close enough? Here are the guidelines I’ve found extremely rewarding:

Broccoli 12-16 inches

Cauliflower 12-16 inches

Brussels sprouts 16-18 inches

Cabbage 10-12 inches

Chinese cabbage 10-12 inches

Rotate crops to avoid diseases

The cabbage family crops are susceptible to several diseases—yellows, blackleg, black rot, clubroot, and root knot. Avoid planting members of the cabbage family in the same place two years in a row. Move them to a spot where beans, peas, tomatoes, or other vegetables grew previously.

When you buy transplants, check for disease symptoms such as stunted plants, blemished or yellowing leaves, or wilted foliage. If you discover badly diseased plants in the garden, pull them up, burn them, or toss them in the trash. Don’t put them in the compost pile.

Mustard, collards, and kale

Kale, mustard, and collards are the tasty greens of the cabbage family. But since they grow like other greens and because most people think of them as greens.

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