How to grow them
Any check to growth gives small, premature heads, so grow them without a pause: rich soil, firm planting, and water every week in dry weather. Bend a few leaves over the curd to keep it white.
Cabbage family
Cauliflowers
The hardest of the family to grow well, and the most satisfying when you do.
- Buy as
- Seed
- Space
- 60cm between plants, 60cm between rows
- Position
- Full sun
- Rotation
- Cabbage family
- Difficulty
- A challenge
The year
Sow indoors
Plant out
Harvest
When to pick
Cut while the curd is tight and white. They all come at once, so sow little and often.
What goes wrong
Problems, and what to do
Tiny heads
Caused by drought, cold or being left too long in the pot. Keep them growing steadily.
Caterpillars and pigeons
Net.
Clubroot
Lime and rotate.
Good neighbours: Nasturtiums.
Same family
More from cabbage family
CabbagesWith the right varieties you can cut a cabbage in every month of the year.
KaleThe toughest green on the plot. It stands through snow and feeds you in the hungry gap.
Broccoli (calabrese)The green broccoli of the supermarket, ready in about twelve weeks.
Purple sprouting broccoliIt takes nearly a year, and repays you with fresh greens when the plot has little else.
Brussels sproutsA long wait and a lot of space, for sprouts that taste nothing like the boiled ones of memory.
SwedesA winter root that looks after itself. It is a brassica, so it goes in the cabbage bed.
TurnipsFast, and far better small. Pulled at golf-ball size they are sweet enough to eat raw.
RadishesSeed to plate in four weeks. The crop to sow with children, or between slower rows.