Growign Cabbage

  


Hello 
here are some tips to grow fresh delicious and healthy cabbage very easily in your gardenmusic.
I always recommend growing cabbage from seed the reason for starting cabbages from seeds is that you can not only get a head start to grow cabbage but also the fact that cabbage trans plant very easily So cabbage being a cool-season crop you would generally start it a little bit before the fall season about six weeks before the fall season in your area you can also start cabbages in early spring and it goes great thru early summer .
  So once the seedlings emerge you can grow up to two seedlings in a container of this size Or if you're using a 16-inch container .
I would advise growing just one plant per container if you plant the seedlings too close you will end up getting smaller heads of cabbage as you will see towards the end of this page and if you're growing in raised beds I  would advise growing about 9 cabbage sin a four by four foot bed Now one of the most common predators for cabbage is the cabbage fly which is actually a butterfly that lays its egg sin side the cabbage plant which results in caterpillar or loopers or cabbage worms that eat the cabbage plant and can cause a lot of devastation So to counter that the easiest method that you see here that I've used is to keep a net around the cabbage which will prevent the cabbage fly from entering the cabbages now you can see a little bit of damage that was do neearlier when the net wasn't put on the cabbage but as soon as I put the Nets on the cabbage it made no difference to the cabbages that were growing but the cabbage fly was never able to fly and enter into the cabbages so i never got any more caterpillars however if you do see cabbage loopers or cabbage worms you need to use either need oil or BT which is a naturally occurring bacteria which will help protect your cabbage plants however rather than spraying anything I would highly recommend that you try to use a net which is very effective in protecting your cabbage plants now cabbage has a very long growing season so once you plant your cabbage seeds it might take up to four months for the cabbage heads to start forming and once the cabbage heads form what you need to do is just feel around the head of the cabbage to make sure that the head is firm if the heads are not firm the cabbage is not formed yet so just feel a little bit around the head of the cabbage and if it feels solid to the touch that's the time you can start harve sting your cabbage so we're gonna go ahead and harvest this cabbage its formed a decent sized head and it's also firm to the touch now cabbage requires full Sunat least six to eight hours so make sure you're growing a cabbage in a sunny area so that you get really good cabbage heads and if your cabbage is not forming big heads it usually means that the temperatures in your area have warmed up and cabbage needs a coll season like early spring or fall season to really form good heads So for this raised bed the cabbages that I've grown have grown pretty well and as you can see the heads are pretty well sized Let's take a closer look here so this is a pretty decent sized cabbage now most of your head should be around this size but if you get smaller sized heads it's usually because they've been placed too close and as you can see some of these heads not very big in size because of the placement I placed a lot more cabbages that I should have and as you can see it this one again is pretty firm so we will go ahead and harvest this Now as far as fertilizer goes I have added a lot of compost into this raised bed and I've used a liquid fertilizer every two weeks for this cabbage  areal and it seemed to do a good job been going great cabbages for me on this raised bed So as you can see this is again a great looking cabbage head cabbage is a very healthy for you it tastes great in salads and even cooked and this one also feels very firm to the touch so we will go ahead and harvest this cabbage as well and as you will see here this cabbage head is not as big as the other cabbage heads that we harvested and that's again because of the spacing between the cabbages so when you plant cabbages it might not be very obvious but cabbages can grow to a very large size and which is why it is very important that you space out your cabbages well so this is an example of a small cabbage head but it's also very delicious and fresh compared to the supermarket cabbage now there's another variety of cabbage called the giant cabbage and I have done a video on this cabbage variety in one of my earlier videos which you can see by clicking on the screen link which you see and once again even for this giant cabbage variety I'm growing only one cabbage plant per this 16-inch container and it grows pretty fast as well now the giant cabbage is just like the other cabbage variety that you see however the heads that it forms are much wider and larger compared to the regular cabbage varieties now as you can see here you have some insect damage on this cabbage plant and I did not use any kind of insecticides and pesticide son this cabbage plant and what happened was that the cabbage fly came inlaid some eggs on the leaves of this plant and you can see that this plant has quite a lot of damage to its leaves I really didn't think this cabbage plan would survive after all that damage and this is why I would again like to stress the importance of using the net to prevent the cabbage fly from coming and laying eggs on your cabbage but as you can see here as the cabbage plant grows and starts forming the head you can see that the insect damage becomes less prevalent and starts to disappear as the cabbage starts forming its head even further and at this stage the head is just begun to form and at this stage it is critical that you continue to fertilize your plant to make sure that you are meeting the that plant's nutritional requirements Now this giant cabbage is growing in about ninety percent of compost I used about 90 percent compost10 percent of of potting soil I realized that by using a lot of compost I was able to grow a lot of great cabbage now this was planted on the21st of October and as you can see it has grown pretty well it needed some support because it was getting very heavy and which is why I just used a stake to secure it and you can see here I am again going to touch and feel whether this cabbage head is form edbefore deciding whether to harvest it so its now time to harvest this plant and let's look at how our harvest looks like now the giant cabbages as you can see forms a really big canopy a lot of leaves and when you actually harvest the cabbage the head of the cabbage is actually much smaller than the canopy it forms now you can actually eat the other leaves of the cabbage the ones that I'm removing right now they taste a little different though from the cabbage itself so it's up to you whether you want to eat those leaves or toss it into a compost pile so whether you are growing the regular cabbage variety or the giant cabbage variety growing your own cabbages is a rewarding experience so I want to know from you do you grow cabbage and what is your favorite variety of cabbage to grow do let me know your thoughts and opinions and I'll see you again soon .