Slim Ballard- Babies Growing in a Cabbage Patch
Growing Cabbage in Home Gardens
People have been growing cabbage as a staple for thousands of years. Domesticated from a weedy Mediterranean sea kale, cabbage was grown by Greeks, Romans, and pioneers.
Cabbage tin can be shredded into well-baked slaws, braised, sautéed, or added to soups and stews, or fermented into sauerkraut or kim chi.
Information technology'south this versatility—and long storage life—that makes cabbage pop among dwelling gardeners.
Home grown cabbage is sweeter and crisper than what y'all notice in stores. I similar to steam it lightly and serve it well-baked-tender, with just a hint of butter and a sprinkling of salt and fresh-ground pepper.
When you call back of cabbage, the first thing that comes to heed is smooth-headed green (or red) cabbages yous run across in supermarkets.
But there are likewise Savoy cabbages with puckered leaves, and Chinese cabbages that form open, upright heads. And at that place are the "Mini" cabbages—small, 1-lb cabbages the size of softballs—that are so pop in European markets. Run across Cabbage Varieties for more information.
Cabbage Varieties | Growing Cabbage in Containers
Harvesting Cabbage
How to Grow Cabbage
Cabbage Cold Tolerance/Flavour
Cabbage is a cool-season vegetable that performs best in the spring or autumn, when temperatures and moisture are even.
The key to growing cabbage, like all cruciferous vegetables, is to provide weather condition for steady, continuous growth.
A rich organic soil and regular, steady water encourage the uninterrupted growth that makes fall vegetables thrive.
Garden Preparation for Growing Cabbage
Cabbage grows best in soil with a lot of organic matter, so mix in a two-three" (5-8cm) layer of practiced garden compost or composted manure when you prepare the bed.
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Cruciferous vegetables reply particularly well to composted or well-aged animate being manure, especially poultry manure.
Growing cabbage pulls a lot of nitrogen from the soil, so build organic fertilizers into the soil when you lot plant.
If you're growing cabbage in the cooler months of jump or fall, choose composted manure or animate being-based soil amendments.
If you're growing cabbage in the warmer months of the summer, you tin can use plant-based organic soil amendments, like alfalfa meal or soy meal.
Cabbage thrives in a pH range of 6.5-7. Run across Irresolute Soil pH for ways to adjust soil pH.
Cabbage Found Spacing
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| Centers in a Deep-Dug Bed © Steve Masley (Click IMAGE to Overstate) |
Cabbage found spacing depends on variety and soil depth.
If you're growing cabbage in a unmarried-dug or roto-tilled garden (soil prepared to a depth of 8-10"–xx-25cm), set early on- and mid-season varieties in rows 26-28" (66-70cm) apart.
Plant early on-flavour and mini cabbages xiv" (35cm) apart in the rows, and mid-season varieties xvi" (40cm) apart.
Late-season, storage-type cabbages grow larger. Found them 24" (60cm) apart in rows 36" (90cm) autonomously.
If y'all're growing cabbage in a deep-dug or raised garden bed (soil prepared to a depth of 20-24"–50-60cm), plant early-season and mini cabbages on 14" (35cm) centers, mid-flavour varieties on sixteen" (40cm) centers, and belatedly-flavour varieties on 20" (50cm) centers.
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Cabbage Plant Care
Moderation is the key to growing cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables. The gardener's job is to even out extremes.
When it gets hot, you lot can't practise much virtually ambient temperature, but you can water, and you can add a thick layer of mulch to continue the root zone cool, and hold wet in the soil.
Watering Cabbage
Similar fall vegetables in general and cruciferous vegetables in particular, cabbage needs regular water—i-i ½" (2-4cm) per week—to sustain the steady growth that cool-season vegetables demand.
Fertilizing Cabbage
Cabbage is a heavy feeder, and even if you lot build organic fertilizers into the soil when you plant, a shot of fish emulsion, compost extract, or compost tea every bit the leaves are sizing upward can increment yields.
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Cabbage Pests
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| Scene of the Crime © Steve Masley Click Epitome to Overstate |
Cabbage whites are the adult form of the well-nigh notorious cabbage pest, the Imported Cabbage Worm .
If you lot're growing cabbage organically, at some betoken you'll meet ane" (2.5cm) white butterflies fluttering around your cabbage plants. They'll have a black spot or ii on their wings, and some take gray tips.
If you see a lot of them, be prepared to encounter holes in your cabbage leaves, lots of fuzzy green worms, and picayune piles of greenish poop.
I used to keep a racketball racket hanging on a peg on my potting demote, and took bully satisfaction swatting pairs of them doing their courtship dance over my brassicas. Just at that place are better ways to deal with infestations.
Floating Row Covers
If you take a major trouble with any cabbage pest—imported cabbage worms, cabbage loopers, cabbage maggots, flea beetles, whatever—floating row covers can exclude the adults that lay the eggs.
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| Soap-and-Oil Sprays are standard role of the homemade garden pest control toolkit. Insects breathe through pores in the sides of their exoskeletons. Soap surfactants encompass these pores, suffocating the insects. The oil helps the lather spray stick to the insect. In a gallon sprayer (one that'south never been used for chemicals), mix 1 tsp dish lather and two tsp vegetable oil. Milkshake and mix thoroughly, then spray plants, making sure y'all cover the undersides of leaves. Garlic Oil added to the mix kills insects more quickly, and also kills insect eggs. The garlic has a remainder repellant effect that lasts for several days. To make garlic oil, smash several cloves with the blade of a knife, then embrace with vegetable oil in a sealed jar. Get out on a counter for 3-four days, shaking the jar occasionally, and so pour the oil through a strainer into a brown glass canteen. Use the same corporeality of garlic oil equally you would vegetable oil. Store garlic oil in a cool, dark place, and information technology will last two-3 months. |
See Cabbage Companion Plants for planting strategies to minimize these and other pests.
Wasps, yellowish jackets, and hornets are predators, and parasitic wasps attack their eggs and larvae. See Natural Garden Pest Command for more information.
Cabbage Loopers are another common pest y'all're likely to meet when growing cabbage. Similar inchworms, they "double up" to move across a leafage. They're the larval class of a nondescript chocolate-brown moth y'all'll probably never run across. In large numbers, they can do a lot of damage.
The same measures used against imported cabbage moths will work confronting cabbage loopers.
Cabbage Maggots are white fly larvae about 1/3" (1cm) long, that feed on stems around the base of the plant. They're ordinarily non a problem for most home gardeners, just in areas where they are, they tin can be controlled with floating row covers, or by scraping the soil abroad from the base of the constitute and mixing in a tablespoon or ii of wood ashes. Printing the soil-and-ash mix back around the base of the plant and water in.
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Cabbage Diseases
As long as you're growing cabbage in a salubrious soil, you're unlikely to see many cabbage diseases. Cabbage is subject to Fusarium Yellows, Club Root, Black Speck and Blackness Rot .
Fusarium and club root are fungal diseases that build upwards in soils. When growing cabbage, rotate cruciferous vegetables to different beds every year to deny hosts, and establish resistant varieties. 'Kaitlin' is resistant to fusarium yellows.
Raising soil pH to vii.3 can inhibit social club root.
Most fungal pathogens are weak competitors in the diverse soil ecosystems supported by soils with a lot of organic affair.
Black Speck usually shows up in cabbage that'southward been cold stored for a while. Small, nighttime blotches appear on the leaves. Resistant varieties are available.
Adequate potassium levels can inhibit blackness speck. Greensand 
Blackness Rot is a bacterial disease that tin can bear upon near cruciferous vegetables. The infection tin can be systemic, affecting the whole plant, or local, forming a characteristic Five-shaped blotch of dead tissue with the broad end at the leafage margin and the narrow end toward the middle of the foliage.
Since it usually enters plants through injured leaves, avoid working in the garden when foliage is wet.
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Splitting
Splitting can exist an issue when growing cabbage. Separate cabbages lose flavour apace and store poorly.
Splitting is more prevalent with fast-growing, early varieties, merely it can happen to mid- and late-season cabbages as well. It commonly happens when heavy rain or irrigation follows drought stress.
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Mulching helps even out soil moisture levels, and reduces stresses on the plants. Timely irrigation too helps. If y'all know it's going to rain in a couple of days, the temptation is to not water, but when growing cabbage, this hesitation can get you into problem.
Dryness stresses the plant, but then abundant water creates a surge of growth that splits the head.
If your cabbages have headed up and heavy rain is forecast, y'all can foreclose splitting past severing some of the feeder roots on one side of the plant with a spade. Cutting vertically into the soil on one side of the constitute, virtually 10" (25cm) out from the base of the plant. A couple of spade-width cuts should sever enough feeder roots to minimize the gamble of splitting with heavy rain.
Since you're going to be harvesting in a few days, the root harm is inconsequential.
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Cabbage Companion Plants
Alliums (onion family plants), Umbellifers (carrots, dill, fennel), and herbs (cilantro, oregano, hyssop) are all good companion plants when growing cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables.
Alliums and herbs release aromatic compounds that mask the scent of cabbages, making it harder for pests to find them. Umbellifers are key plants in Natural Garden Pest Control and Alluring Benign Insects.
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Growing Cabbage in Containers
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| Growing in a Window Box © Steve Masley Click IMAGE to Overstate |
Cabbage tin be grown in containers, every bit long as you lot select a deep container or pot and build organic fertilizers into the potting mix at planting time..
Cabbage needs at least a 12" (30cm) root zone to course heads when grown in containers.
A deep window box (1 foot wide x 1 foot deep, and 2-4 anxiety long–30cm x 30cm x 60-120cm) or half wine barrel is an excellent choice for growing cabbage in containers.
For the warm flavour, use worm castings, alfalfa meal, soy meal, or any animal-based organic soil amendment.
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| © Steve Masley...Click Paradigm to Enlarge |
Select 'Mini' or compact varieties similar 'Gonzales', 'Savoy Express', or 'Scarlet Express'.
Don't overcrowd plants. I know the temptation is to plant the whole half dozen-pack of seedlings, merely don't do it, unless you've got a minimum of six cubic feet of container space to devote to them.
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Harvesting Cabbage
Harvest cabbage when the heads have closed and the wrapper leaves are yet in adept shape. If the wrapper leaves are yellowing or blotchy, the cabbage has stood besides long in the field and won't last as long in storage.
Cutting the heads off at the base of operations of the plant, and get out 2-3 wrapper leaves to assistance protect the heads from bruising or damage. Early varieties keep for a few weeks in the vegetable crisper or root cellar. Mid- and late-flavour cabbages tin can keep for a few months.
One actually healthful way to preserve cabbage is Lactic Acid Fermentation—making sauerkraut or kim chi. Lactic acrid fermentation preserves the vitamin C and produces a crunchy, succulent home-fabricated probiotic that's great for digestion.
Cabbage Varieties | Growing Cabbage in Containers
Harvesting Cabbage
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